Kansas senator takes first step toward impeaching Mayorkas

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) introduced a no-confidence resolution against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday, marking the first effort in the Senate to mirror impeachment efforts in the House.

Marshall has been a strong critic of Mayorkas’s handling of the immigration crisis at the United States’s southern border with Mexico. He claimed during an exchange with Mayorkas that he would be “derelict” in his duty as a senator if he did not do something to fix the crisis.

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“There isn’t one American who believes our southern border is secure,” Marshall said in a release on Thursday. “In the real world, if you fail at your job, you get fired — the federal government should be no different.”

The nine-page resolution claimed Mayorkas’s supposed failures range from increased immigration, including the influx of approximately 15,000 Haitians near the Texas border, to an increase in drug trafficking and overdoses. The resolution also accuses Mayorkas of being dishonest to Congress regarding his handling of the border. He claimed he has maintained control of the border.

Mayorkas argued that the definition of a secure border laid out under the Secure Fence Act of 2006 has never been met by any administration.

“The Secure Fence Act provides that operational control means that not a single individual crosses the border illegally. And it’s for that reason that prior secretaries and myself have said that under that definition, no administration has had operational control,” Mayorkas said.

“As I have testified under oath multiple times, we use a lens of reasonableness in defining operational control. Are we maximizing the resources that we have to deliver the most effective results? And under that definition, we are doing so very much to gain operational control,” he added.

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Although the resolution calls for Mayorkas’s impeachment, it would have little direct impact on the secretary’s job if it did pass the Democratic-led Senate. It also does not trigger any impeachment procedures, which the House does. Although lawmakers have expressed interest in impeaching Mayorkas, no proceeding has been started.

The Department of Homeland Security has pushed for Congress to do more to fix the broken immigration system rather than punishing Mayorkas specifically.