Joe Biden’s Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas survives US House impeachment vote
- A few Republicans joined with Democrats to defeat a drive to impeach Homeland Security secretary
- Republican leaders are ramping up attacks on the Biden administration’s border enforcement record
Joe Biden’s immigration chief narrowly escaped impeachment over the US border crisis Tuesday, in a party-line vote dismissed by Democrats as a political stunt ahead of a presidential election expected to feature immigration as a major issue.
The failed rebuke was led by hardline Republicans in the House of Representatives who have been targeting Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for months over a surge in illegal entries across the southern border.
Republicans had been sweating on what was expected to be a close vote, and so it proved – as three members of the party sided with Democrats in a vote that ended 216-214 in Mayorkas’ favour.
Impeachment is the political equivalent of an indictment and Mayorkas would have faced the prospect of a trial in the Senate, although he would have been acquitted by the Democratic-led upper chamber and allowed to keep his job.
The House – which had only impeached one other cabinet official in its history, Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 – took a single vote on two articles accusing Mayorkas of failure to enforce the law and of lying to Congress.