America's Talking - Mayorkas Is First Sitting Cabinet Member to Be Impeached in U.S. History

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

In its second vote attempt in exactly a week, the U.S. House on Tuesday night impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who becomes the first sitting cabinet member to be impeached in U.S. history. Mayorkas was impeached largely along party lines by a vote of 214-213, with three Republicans voting with 210 Democrats against. As more than 10 million illegal border crossers entered the country in three years and a record number of known or suspected terrorists have been apprehended under Mayorkas’ watch, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, MD, R-Tenn., led the charge to impeach him. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, Chief Content Officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. Joining me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am fine, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, February 16th. Casey, the U.S. House made history this week when it voted to impeach the first cabinet member in the nation's history. Republicans blame Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for the ongoing border crisis, allowing millions of illegal border crossers into the country in violation of congressionally passed laws.

They also accuse him of lying to Congress over the border crisis. Mayorkas now faces trial in the Senate where Democrats hold a slight majority and are expected to acquit him. Tell us more, Casey. Yeah, as you said, this is unprecedented the first time a city cabinet member has. been impeached, and it is a strong rebuke from House lawmakers against President Joe Biden in particular, of course, for appointing Mayorkas and also his handling of the border crisis. Now, Mayorcas does have broad authority in how he deals with the border, but ultimately he is reporting to the president. I think from what House Republicans have been saying, this is really

aimed right at Biden. Of course, they're very frustrated with Mayorkas. They've pointed out how they felt Mayorkas was not responsive enough to their inquiries, their request for information. And the proceedings leading up to all this, Mayorkas defended himself, said he's testified before Congress many times and given them plenty of information. So I think there's some bad blood at this point. And of course, with the first impeachment of a sitting cabinet member, that is not that surprising. But really, this is a manifestation in D.C. of frustration that's growing across the nation because of what's happening south at the border of the U.S. and Mexico. Now, many of the people coming across into the U.S. are not from Mexico. They're from all kinds of countries and not even just

Latin American or South American countries. The border data, as you know, Dan, shows that people are traveling one way or another to South America, to Mexico, and then coming up through the southern border into the U.S. because they know it's very porous and it's easy to get across. So we know from great reporting at thecenter square.com that more than 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the U.S. since President Biden took office. That's more than the population of about 40 U.S. state. So this is not a small number. 10 million, that's more than the population of New York City. And so these are big numbers. They are impacting not just border states anymore. You have mayor's, Democratic mayors in New York and Chicago complaining people in Massachusetts.

As far as Massachusetts, Denver. People are complaining about what's happening at the southern border. We actually got new numbers from January just the other day, Casey, just about 240,000 illegal border crossers in one month in January. So as Congress debates and accuses Mayorkas of being responsible for this, this crisis is ongoing and it doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. the ramifications as you pointed out are being felt nationwide. In addition to the humans that are coming across the border, there's illegal, essentially, fentanyl is being poured into the country and making its way across the country.

Fentanyl deaths have skyrocketed in the past few years. So it's just, it's touching every facet of American life. Yeah, I mean, there's a human trafficking, which is a huge issue as well, child trafficking. in particular, you have these unaccompanied minors showing up. You have people with children that maybe aren't related to them. And it's unclear and almost impossible to know if this child is being willingly brought into the U.S. or was maybe brought by coercion into the U.S. to help get in. And so this is a big issue. Of course, this has played out in Congress recently where

President Joe Biden has been pushing on lawmakers to pass a border bill. So Democrats in the Senate negotiated something with Republican Senate leadership to put in place some border provisions, but there was really a revolt among Republicans, you know, about half of Senate Republicans and a large majority of House Republicans, if not all, were very upset about this issue because they say it's disingenuous. They say the money is already there. the laws are already on the books for Biden to close the border to enforce the border laws. He's just choosing not to do it.

And then in an election year, he's saying, hey, Congress, you need to do something about this. And Republicans are very frustrated about this because they say, you have everything you need. You've made some changes at the executive level to not enforce the border. And one of those would be, you know, that deportations under President Biden have plummeted. Unless you have like a pretty bad criminal record, it's very unlikely that you're going to get deported out of the U.S. And this is a Biden-era rule. And so word gets out on that. If you can just make it across the border, you're not going to get deported. Another example is being pretty lax on asylum. If you pretty show up at the southern border and say that you are fearful to return to your home country,

there's a very good chance you're just going to be allowed in. And those who are caught by border patrol, they get processed. Border agents, so much of their resources now are just processing and escorting migrants into the U.S. instead of catching and turning them away. So they're given, you know, they're caught. They're given a court date. And then they say, hey, come back to this court date here in two years. And, of course, you know, they never come back. Who's going to come to a court date in two years when it's not even, you know, your home country?

So these are some of the procedural, I guess you could saw administrative things that are helping facilitate this border crisis. And of course, Dan, we have covered extensively on this program and at the center square.com about the Texas governor Greg Abbott and his face. off with Biden about the border fencing. I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit, but that is another feature to this that I think helped propel enough political will to actually impeach Mayorkas. Yeah, just briefly, Texas Governor Abbott and the Texas legislature has allocated more than $11 billion to border security efforts. They say, rightfully so, that border security is supposed to be an issue for the federal government to deal with, but because the federal government, as they say, is not dealing with it. They're spending state taxpayer dollars to erect

this fencing. And then there's this dispute where the federal government is sending border patrol troops in to tear down the fencing as Texas puts it up. Many lawsuits making their way through the court systems. But let's go back to Maito Marcos now, Casey. He is facing trial in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats. Do you see anything, any other result here other than acquittal? Yeah, I don't think that Mayorkas faces really any danger in the Senate. I think he's going to be just fine. There's just mostly the political implications of this. It might be a tough vote for a handful of senators depending on their, you know, respective states. But I think Mayorkis is going to be fine. He's not going to be removed unless Biden finds it politically expedient to remove him. And I think this point for Biden, it would be, I don't know, you could say it was an admission of guilt, but also Biden could change out his, Mayorkis put in a new one, say he's going to start taking the border seriously, sort of throw Mayorkas under the bus in an election year and put someone else in place. I think that's much more

likely than any impeachment taking Mayorkis down. As usual, Casey, thank you for your insight into this very important story. Listeners can keep up with the developments in the Mayarchus impeachment and more at thecenter.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalib. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.