Democrats are warning Republicans that impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will set a new precedent, allowing for cabinet secretaries to be impeached over policy disputes with Congress. The impeachment articles were moved through the Homeland Security Committee Tuesday, Jan. 30. A vote in the House has not been scheduled yet. 

“This is a new Democratic Party and we are not going to take this lying down,” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., told reporters. “And they better be careful what precedent they are setting because it will come back to bite them.”

Democrats are making many arguments against impeaching Mayorkas. For one, they contend he hasn’t committed any high crime or misdemeanor. 

Goldman added that under the precedent Republicans are setting, Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen could have been impeached during the Trump administration for the policy to separate children from their parents to deter illegal crossings. 

“If the Republicans are going to open the door to impeach a secretary because they don’t like how that secretary is doing his job, well, what happens if there’s another child separation policy?” Goldman said. “There are a slippery slope of any number of disagreements that would then rise to the level of impeachment.” 

“I caution people to recognize the importance of misuse of this power,” Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., told Straight Arrow News. “It’s a dangerous precedent and one that we should be very careful with.”  

Republicans dispute that this is about policy disagreements, and contend that Mayorkas has purposefully failed to enforce laws passed by Congress, which has led to nearly 7.1 million illegal crossings since the Biden administration took office. They also blame Mayorkas for a dramatic increase in the number of drugs being trafficked into America and a record 106,699 overdose deaths in 2021. 

“We will prevail because nobody deserves it more than this man. I call him the architect of destruction,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said. “He knows what he’s done and he needs to pay for his sins.”  

Republicans acknowledge that the impeachment is unlikely to go anywhere if and when it passes the House. 

The same question gets asked, ‘What about the Senate? Are you just doing something that’s going to wind up being fruitless anyway because of the Senate?’ Well, fine, if that’s what they choose to do, but I have a duty to do.

Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn.

“The same question gets asked, ‘What about the Senate? Are you just doing something that’s going to wind up being fruitless anyway because of the Senate?’ Well, fine, if that’s what they choose to do, but I have a duty to do,” Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., said. 

Democrats have come out in unison against the impeachment. So, if Mayorkas is formally impeached, Republicans will have to do it on a partisan basis, which is exactly what the GOP warned against in 2019 during Donald Trump’s first impeachment. 

In a sign of how much has changed, former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., criticized then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for moving Donald Trump’s first impeachment through a committee that had not historically handled impeachment investigations.

“She has completely neutered the intelligence committee,” Cheney said in October 2019, according to C-SPAN. “She has said they must be focused on a partisan impeachment process and not their oversight obligations that we have as a body, as an important branch of this government. And they’ll be held accountable for that.”

Democrats are making Cheney’s exact argument now. They said Republicans are not following the proper procedures by going through the Homeland Security Committee instead of the Judiciary Committee, which typically handles impeachments.