The House Homeland Security Committee held its first impeachment hearing against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The witnesses included the attorneys general of Oklahoma and Montana who described how drugs and illegal immigration at the southern border have impacted their states.

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“Babies born addicted to drugs, kids thrown into foster care because their parents would rather buy drugs than take care of them, young girls sexually assaulted by family members on drugs, people murdered over $20 drug deals gone wrong,” Montana State Attorney General Austin Knudsen told the committee.  

The committee conducted an investigation into Mayorkas and wrote five interim reports on what it describes as Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty, unprecedented cartel control of the southwest border, the human and financial costs of the crisis, and the waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

Committee members said they want to show that illegal immigration impacts the entire country.

“Criminal illegal immigrants are not content with growing only black market marijuana,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said. “They also produce and distribute fentanyl, and they engage in sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Oklahoma’s law enforcement community fights a constant battle against these evils.”

Drummond said immigration and an unsecure border cost his state’s taxpayers more than $750 million a year. He said that total includes added law enforcement costs like equipment and personnel, housing costs for those who are arrested and jailed at the local level, and costs of the fentanyl epidemic.

Democrats brought in an attorney who testified that Mayorkas is doing his job by implementing the Biden administration’s policies, which is not an impeachable offense, even if members disagree with those policies.

“If the official actions of the officer are in accord with the directives of his elected superior, the president, removing the secretary changes nothing,” said Frank Bowman, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law. “Members of this committee disapprove of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, the Constitution gives this Congress a wealth of legislative powers to change them.”

Republicans said Mayorkas is not applying the laws the way Congress wrote them. They singled out the Biden administration’s use of mass parole for immigrants. They claim that parole is supposed to be issued on a case-by case-basis.

“The scale of Secretary Mayorkas’ mass use and abuse of parole is unprecedented, and has been declared inconsistent with the laws passed by Congress by multiple federal judges,” Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., said. 

According to Green, the deputy chief of the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector told the committee, “The belief that they are going to be released with no consequences is certainly something that many migrants tell our agents.”

The chairman added that the committee does not have a timeline for when it will mark up articles of impeachment and attempt to send them to the House floor.

Democrats contend there are no grounds for an impeachment and that Republicans are making this entirely political. They pointed to a New York Times report that revealed Green was ready to impeach Mayorkas back in April 2023 before the latest record-breaking immigration numbers.

According to the Times, Green told a group of donors that he will make the case to impeach Mayorkas and hand it over to the House Judiciary Committee which handles impeachments.

“It is now campaign season and Republicans recently rolled out their impeachment proceedings against the secretary like a pre-planned, predetermined, political stunt it is.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. “This is not a legitimate impeachment.”