Republican lawmakers are set to throw fire at Alejandro Mayorkas, the embattled US secretary of Homeland Security, during a House judiciary committee oversight hearing Wednesday.
Mayorkas, who has been the target of a GOP-led congressional investigation over his handling of the US-Mexico border, is expected to face a series of tough questions regarding his tenure as head of the department, which broadly oversees US immigration and border policies. The hearing could also be a precursor to an impeachment process that some House Republicans have threatened over the past few months.
A refugee from Cuba, Mayorkas is the first Latino and immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security and has faced backlash for being soft on undocumented immigrants entering the country.
But the Wednesday oversight hearing is largely seen as a chance for Republicans to gain political capital on a major election issue as they hammer Biden’s top domestic security official. It likely won’t address the conditions in which a record number of undocumented people are dying attempting to enter the US, due to drownings and increasingly, extreme heat.
“It’s more like a political exercise than a realistic exercise to form border policy,” said Néstor Rodríguez, an author and professor of migration at the University of Texas-Austin, of what he expects to see from GOP critics at the hearing. “I don’t expect that they’re going to talk much about how can we realistically come together to create a policy that helps deal with the border challenges.”
A group of House Republicans – dominated by members of the rightwing House Freedom Caucus – have been seeking to impeach Mayorkas for the majority of his tenure. A cabinet secretary has not been impeached since 1876.
Led by Andy Biggs of Arizona – who is also a member of the House judiciary committee – the lawmakers allege that Mayorkas’ leadership “directly led to an increase in illegal aliens and illegal narcotics, including deadly fentanyl, entering the United States”, according to language from the impeachment resolution introduced in the House in August 2021.
As part of the Republican-led congressional investigation launched this year, the House homeland security committee released an 111-page report accusing Mayorkas of “dereliction of duty” – a specific federal charge for service members in the US military who are found to intentionally neglect their duties – as head of the department.
Yet according to transcribed interviews with border patrol agents released earlier this month in a memorandum by Democratic members of the judiciary and homeland security committees, there has been “no crisis going on right now” at the south-west border.
Still, border enforcement is high right now, according to Rodríguez, and that’s dangerous for those defying the administration’s rules to enter the US.
“People take riskier ways to cross the border,” he said. “[T]he riskier ways add up, and more people die.”
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The panel’s interrogation also comes as the Biden administration has faced backlash from both Republicans and Democrats. Following the May expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that limited asylum requests during the pandemic, the Biden administration implemented new rules that effectively extended those restrictions. Some immigration advocates say its requirements for asylum seekers, such as booking appointments through a specialized Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app and trying to enter a different country before they can try the US, are dangerous for migrants and violate immigration law.
A federal judge struck down those requirements on Tuesday in a victory for those advocacy groups, although the administration has two weeks to appeal.
Immigration has been a major issue in the 2024 election, with most Republican presidential candidates declaring in their announcements and along the trail their commitments to further restrict access to the border.
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