A House Republican intent on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas laid out a list of charges that could be filed against the Cabinet official for his dereliction of duty managing the border.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), a reserve law enforcement officer, cited five Louisiana statutes that he believed the Senate-confirmed official ought to be tried on during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday about the record-high number of attempts to enter the United States unlawfully since President Joe Biden took office.
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“I know Secretary Mayorkas is watching this or having his team of attorneys watch this. Good because over the course of the next year, this committee is going to lay up our case against you, sir,” Higgins said.
Higgins said Mayorkas had violated Louisiana’s revised statutes, including 14:32 for negligent homicide, 14:24 for principals to any criminal action, and a third for thousands of murders, presumably Americans killed consuming fentanyl.
At the federal level, Higgins said Mayorkas should be charged for breaking 18 U.S. Code 1001 for “knowingly and willfully [having] lied to this body again and again and again about our border.”
Higgins said Mayorkas should also face charges for violating Section 242 of Title 18 of U.S. law for having “deprived Americans of their very life.”
The Department of Homeland Security defended Mayorkas’s work atop the government’s third-largest department.
“Secretary Mayorkas is proud to advance the noble mission of this Department, support its extraordinary workforce, and serve the American people,” said an official authorized to speak with the media in an email Tuesday afternoon. “ The Department will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border, protect the nation from terrorism, and improve our cybersecurity, all while building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system.”
DHS added that its personnel have been more active in maintaining border security, including by having “surged resources to the border, reduced the number of encounters between ports of entry, disrupted more smuggling operations than ever before, and interdicted more drugs in the last two years than had been stopped in the five years prior.”
The congressman hinted that he would like to see Mayorkas spend years in prison.
“I’m going to see to it that you have plenty of time in the course of your remaining life to remember the names to 200,000 Americans who are dead because of fentanyl coming across a border that you have blown wide open,” Higgins said.
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The DHS official said Congress ought to move on legislative solutions to outdated immigration policies “instead of pointing fingers and trying to score political points.”
House GOP lawmakers have introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas two times this year, but Republicans are divided on whether and how quickly to move forward on them.
