A Republican lawmaker announced plans Friday to file articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, calling him a “threat” to the country’s security.
The move by Rep. Andy Biggs, Arizona Republican, is unlikely to go anywhere in the Democrat-controlled House, but it underscores a growing sense of worry among some members of Congress over the direction the Department of Homeland Security has taken in the Biden administration.
Mr. Biggs pinned that on Mr. Mayorkas.
“As a result of his actions and policies, America is more in danger today than when he began serving as secretary,” the congressman said. “He is willfully refusing to maintain operational control of the border and is encouraging aliens to enter our country illegally.”
Mr. Biggs said that amounted to a dereliction of duty to Mr. Mayorkas’s oath of office.
Impeachment requires a majority vote in the House, but removal would take a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which is even less likely than House impeachment.
Mr. Mayorkas is in his second stint at the department. In the Obama administration, he served as head of the legal immigration agency, then as deputy secretary at Homeland Security.
Through six months of his new tenure, he has overseen an unprecedented surge of children, families and extracontinental migrants, with some Republicans blaming a portion of the latest COVID-19 surge on the migrants.
He also has irked conservatives with orders to restrict deportations, erasing most Trump get-tough border policies, and making changes to language agents and officers are allowed to use — such as banning the term “alien.”