US Senate ends impeachment of Biden's border chief Mayorkas
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[April 18, 2024]
By Richard Cowan, Makini Brice and Moira Warburton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-majority U.S. Senate on Wednesday
dismissed impeachment charges against President Joe Biden's top border
official, bringing a swift end to an effort that House of
Representatives Republicans launched months ago.
In a series of partisan votes, the Senate dismissed the charges accusing
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of not enforcing U.S.
border laws and lying to Congress, as illegal immigration has hit record
levels since Biden took office in 2021.
Biden's Republican challenger in the Nov. 5 elections that will
determine control of the White House and Congress, Donald Trump, has
made the border a central focus of his campaign, and Reuters/Ipsos
polling shows that immigration is a top concern among voters, and the
top issue for Republicans.
Mayorkas denied wrongdoing, and the White House and congressional
Democrats blasted the exercise as a misuse of the impeachment powers to
highlight a policy dispute, rather than addressing the standard of "high
crimes and misdemeanors."
"Once and for all, the Senate has rightly voted down this baseless
impeachment that even conservative legal scholars said was
unconstitutional," White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a
statement. He chastised House Republicans for staging "baseless
political stunts while killing real bipartisan border security reforms."
Trump earlier this year helped kill a bipartisan Senate deal that would
have imposed tough new limits on immigration.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a joint statement with fellow top
Republicans, said "every single Senate Democrat has issued their full
endorsement of the Biden administration’s dangerous open border
policies."
The U.S. Border Patrol made more than 1 million arrests of migrants
crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in the past six months,
according to internal agency statistics reviewed by Reuters, a pace
similar to record-breaking totals during Biden's first three years in
office.
Mayorkas, 64, is a former federal prosecutor who was born in Cuba. He
left with his family in 1960 after Fidel Castro came to power. He
maintains that the record numbers of migrants arriving at the
U.S.-Mexico border over several months stem from Congress' inability to
reform antiquated laws.
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![](../images/041824PIX/news_n23.jpg)
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to the media
after the Senate dismissed the House Republican impeachment charges
against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at the U.S.
Capitol in Washington, U.S., April 17, 2024. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
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TUMULTUOUS EFFORT
The House effort to impeach Mayorkas was tumultuous, as an initial
vote narrowly failed. A week later, with No. 2 House Republican
Steve Scalise back from cancer treatment, Republicans won approval
of the two articles impeachment on a 214-213 vote.
That was not the only impeachment effort bubbling in the
conservative-led House, where Biden himself has been the target of
an investigation that so far has failed to produce firm evidence
that he broke any laws related to his family's past business
dealings.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer engineered Wednesday's Senate
outcome that protected Mayorkas from losing his Cabinet-level job by
averting a trial in which senators were sworn in to judge the case.
Republican senators protested Schumer's move, insisting on a
full-blown trial, and repeatedly sought delays when it became clear
there would be no trial.
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell earlier had called for a
"thorough consideration" of the charges against Mayorkas.
Disposing of the case without a trial, McConnell added in a Senate
speech, "would mean running away both from our fundamental
responsibility and from the glaring truth of the record-breaking
crisis at our southern border."
The effort was just the second time in history that a member of a
president's cabinet was impeached by the House. The last in 1876
involved President Ulysses S. Grant's secretary of war, William
Belknap, over allegations of corruption. He was acquitted by the
Senate.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Moira Warburton and Makini Brice;
Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)
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