“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” goes the old adage. For Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democrat Senate majority leader, the nation’s issues brought before the Senate are first and foremost political “nails” rather than weighty ones demanding considered actions in the national interest — especially in this election year.
Among Senator Schumer’s recent “nails” to hammer was making the impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas disappear. The House delivered articles of impeachment and announced in the well of the Senate two articles, charging Mayorkas with “willfully subverting immigration laws by refusing to carry out enforcement laws,” while “breaching the public trust by lying to and obstructing Congress.” The House was right to expect that the Senate would carry out its moral and constitutional duty to convene a trial to, at minimum, deliberate over the issues brought before it.
Instead, Schumer and fellow Democrats moved quickly to dismiss the charges. Democrats — who control the Senate — exonerated a public official without holding a trial or even reviewing evidence. On a party-line vote, Democrat senators voted without dissent to dismiss the two counts, inexplicably arguing that they were “unconstitutional” to thereby deprive House impeachment managers from airing their case.
Democrats’ response to a Mayorkas impeachment trial was predictably political, rather than treated as a significant issue for the American public deserving attention and action. Why? The House impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas marked only the second time in U.S. history a seated Cabinet secretary (and Democrat) would be tarred with that ignominy. Senator Schumer further did not want the disastrous border policies, or a Cabinet secretary of the Biden Democrat White House, so visibly exposed in a very public trial. Nor did he want Senate Democrats campaigning for election this fall having to explain why they voted against impeachment while the border situation simmers as voters’ most important national issue.
But for a moment, ignore the controversial issue of immigration; forget the politics of the Senate. Instead, consider that Secretary Mayorkas heads the Department of Homeland Security — with emphasis on “security.”
Under what circumstances are upwards of ten million migrants illegally crossing our borders, mostly unimpeded and unvetted (with many single males of military age from countries with interests inimical to ours), considered acceptable for “homeland security” and not an acute security threat? As Americans, wouldn’t even Democrat senators want an honest answer to that question?
A Senate impeachment trial would have shed further light on what the Biden administration has allowed to occur at our nation’s southern border. As many as 10 million people have been reported illegally entering the U.S. since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, with nearly 1.6 million known “gotaways“ and hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens now granted parole into the country every month. In fiscal 2023 alone, there were more than 3.2 million illegal border crossings nationwide, a total that approximates the annual number of U.S. births. December 2023 alone saw more than 300,000 migrant border “encounters — an average of 10,000 per day, the highest monthly total ever recorded. Most enter believing U.S. borders are “open” and remain with scant fear of deportation.
We’re told that those entering illegally are “vetted” before being released into communities. But they are, in fact, released after minimal “processing.” This means taking photos and fingerprints, entering unverifiable names and birth dates, running these data through U.S. law enforcement and immigration databases, and creating an immigration file if none exists. It should further entail ensuring that each unknown migrant isn’t a known terrorist and doesn’t have a criminal record, contagious disease, or prior immigration violation. But often, the sheer numbers overwhelming border authorities make all this impossible. For release into the country, all that many get is a token “notice to appear” at an immigration court hearing — often years in the future — to argue why they shouldn’t be deported for being here illegally.
Maybe more importantly, it is military-aged single males who have crossed U.S. borders in alarming numbers over the past years. In one example, nationwide encounters with Chinese migrants — again, most of whom are young, single males of military age — experienced a remarkable surge, reaching 52,700 in 2023, almost twice the previous year’s count. The Senate was already briefed by no less than FBI director Christopher Wray “that dangerous individuals have entered the United States illegally at the southern border.”
Also of concern is the issue of fentanyl, along with other illicit drugs and substances, entering the country through porous borders in large quantities. Investigators for a U.S. House committee recently released a report detailing what they describe as new evidence the Chinese government continues to “directly” subsidize “the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl.” Street fentanyl has driven a devastating surge in fatal overdoses, killing tens of thousands of people in the U.S every year. FBI director Wray also had earlier briefed the Senate that “the FBI alone seized enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million people.”
To put a figure on the national security implications, costs to the American taxpayer for the influx of migrants, taking into account factors like emergency medical care, incarcerating illegal aliens in local jails, and federal budgets that dole out billions in welfare every year, a FAIR study estimated the net annual amount at $150.7 billion.
Given the extraordinary consequences of unsecured borders, remarkably, on more than one occasion in oath-sworn testimony before Congress, secretary of Homeland “Security” Mayorkas vocally testified that the “borders are secure.” As Americans, why was all this not enough to prompt even one Democrat senator to break ranks and demand that an impeachment trial of Secretary Mayorkas proceed?
Secretary Mayorkas’s trial needed to go forward, if for no other reason than to get an under-oath answer to the lead question that begs for an answer: “Secretary Mayorkas, what orders did you receive from President Biden regarding border security and immigration?” The duty and responsibility of the Senate to conduct an impeachment trial was not about politics, but is — and very much should be — a bipartisan issue of valid and grave national security concern for all American citizens.
Secretary Mayorkas was willfully and purposefully shielded by Senate Democrats from having to answer to the American people with straight, under-oath answers about the open-borders policies of the Biden administration and their consequences, as well as his actions as head of “Homeland Security.” Given what transpired, it is now essential for Republican senators and candidates to take the issue on the November campaign trail committed and equipped with fresh ammunition against incumbent and prospective Democrat candidates in every election race — not just the Senate — not to let voters forget who kept Homeland Security secretary Mayorkas in office. There, now it is political.
Colonel Chris J. Krisinger, USAF (ret.) served policy advisory tours at both the Pentagon and at the Department of State. He is a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and an honors graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and was also a National Defense fellow at Harvard University. If you would like to continue the discussion, contact him at [email protected].
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