The House of Representatives must move to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas because the southern border crisis demands an immediate response, said Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas.
Fallon spoke to the Washington Examiner as Republicans decide whether to impeach Mayorkas or probe broader immigration security issues.
"We really can't fix the current problem and ... the future without addressing the past," Fallon told the Examiner. "It gives me no joy to do it ... but what we saw unfold on the border over the last two years — a crisis then turned into a catastrophe, and now it's near collapse."
Fallon told the Examiner that he already had seen significant backing from House colleagues after he filed articles for impeachment Jan. 9. He added that there were 33 co-sponsors — up to 35 as of Wednesday morning — who signed on despite the chamber not being in session this week.
"I believe that number will grow to 50 or possibly even 100. So I'd say it's a strong movement within the party and the conference," Fallon said. "We also are united in so much, as we know that nothing's going to get passed unless there's 218 of us singing from the same sheet of music, if you will — when we only have 222 members, you can only lose four."
The push for Mayorkas' impeachment goes against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's strategy to investigate the border crisis before going down an impeachment path that seems certain to fail in the Senate.
Fallon told the Examiner that Mayorkas has violated federal law three times while in his position at the Department of Homeland Security. The three articles of impeachment accuse Mayorkas of not fulfilling his duties, lying under oath, and knowingly slandering his own employees.
Mayorkas would join Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 in being the only Cabinet secretaries to be impeached.
"The American people today need to know what he's done is gross dereliction of duty, but history needs to know, too," Fallon told the Examiner. "We've only had one Cabinet secretary impeached in our history. ... Last was in 1876 and people will say, I wonder what happened there. People are going to say, In 2023, I wonder what happened there."
Fallon, an Oversight Committee member, said he hopes impeachment hearings will reveal whether the border crisis was due to Mayorkas' "incompetence or is he just doing the work of his masters?"
"He doesn't seem to have a backbone to stand up and do his job," Fallon told the Examiner. "What if [President Joe] Biden wants to fire him for getting the numbers down? Biden can answer to the 2024 electorate himself, but Mayorkas doesn't seem to have any."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics showed an all-time high 301,625 encounters were reported in December, with 251,487 at the U.S.-Mexico border.
More than 5.2 million migrants have been encountered at the southern border since Feb. 1, 2021, 10 days after Biden took office.
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