House Republicans will mark up their impeachment charges against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, bringing them closer to pursuing the rare step of impeaching a Cabinet official.

The House Homeland Security Committee will vote on a resolution that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors for his handling of the southern border, despite the fact that several constitutional scholars have stated that the evidence does not meet that standard.

The extraordinary measure would make Mayorkas the first Cabinet secretary to face impeachment in nearly 150 years.

The attempt at impeachment occurs as House Republicans are under increasing pressure from their constituents to hold the Biden administration responsible on a crucial campaign issue: immigration.

Even while Republicans have been looking at Mayorkas’ border policies ever since they took back control of the House, their impeachment investigation has accelerated in the new year. Charges of impeachment against Mayorkas will be brought to the floor as soon as possible, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has also declared he will not accept a bipartisan agreement being negotiated in the Senate to address border issues.

Senior House Republicans are certain they have the votes to remove the DHS secretary from office, but with their slim majority, they can only lose two seats. According to a GOP source who spoke to the news channel, Republicans are organizing a whip check this week to see how the conference is going.

Before the markup, House GOP Whip Tom Emmer told the news that he was calculating votes but that “we are going to have to pass that.” I mean, what he did is really awful.

According to GOP sources, House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee has been holding meetings with some of the surviving GOP holdouts, including Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, and has released many memos on Mayorkas in recent weeks. In a closed-door meeting on Monday night, Green made his case to senior Republicans, claiming afterwards that no one had any objections or queries.

GOP swing district representative Rep. Don Bacon announced he will vote to impeach Mayorkas, indicating a rising momentum for the endeavor. However, Dan Newhouse, a moderate Republican member of the House from Washington, was less clear.

“I’d like to hear every defense that is offered. I want to just understand it completely because I know there is a lot of support for it, Newhouse said.

According to a statement Green gave to the news channel, “These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment.” He has consistently and wilfully disregarded the immigration regulations passed by Congress. By purposefully lying to Congress and the American people and impeding congressional oversight of his agency, he has betrayed the confidence of the public.

Mayorkas Breach Public Trust

Mayorkas “breach of public trust” and “willful and systematic refusal to comply with the law,” according to Green, amount to impeachable acts of high crimes and misdemeanors. Green asserted that Mayorkas had “refused to comply” with detention orders, “willfully exceeded” his parole power, and had lied when he claimed DHS had “operational control” over the border. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision that states may not challenge federal immigration law, he quoted Justice Samuel Alito of the Supreme Court, who stated that Congress could employ the weapons of inter-branch warfare, including impeachment.

However, a number of legal experts have refuted the legal justifications put out by Republicans to back their attempt to remove Trump from office.

House Republicans have not produced any proof of impeachable acts, according to Ross Garber, a Tulane law professor who has defended numerous Republican officeholders in impeachment proceedings as both the prosecution and the defense.

According to Ross, I believe that Secretary Mayorkas is guilty of maladministration, as stated by the House Republicans. The charges, at least as they stand right now, don’t qualify as serious crimes or misdemeanors.

As a former federal judge, U.S. attorney, and assistant attorney general, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who served under Republican President George W. Bush, wrote in a recent op-ed that he is confident that despite the House Committee on Homeland Security’s extensive investigation, they have not produced any evidence that meets the necessary standards.

Republicans have invited constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley to testify in hearings; he stated, “There is no current evidence he is corrupt or committed an impeachable offense.” In addition, a group of 25 law professors stated in an open letter that Mayorkas’ impeachment would be “utterly unjustified as a matter of constitutional law.”

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