Madam Speaker, smoke and mirrors have never been the foundation of the Constitution. That is all we have today to misrepresent to the American people that we are doing serious work. It comes to mind as to whether or not Secretary Mayorkas…
Madam Speaker, smoke and mirrors have never been the foundation of the Constitution. That is all we have today to misrepresent to the American people that we are doing serious work.
It comes to mind as to whether or not Secretary Mayorkas is being charged with Articles of Impeachment because he is a Cuban immigrant who came to the United States with his family as political refugees, that they spent time fleeing the Nazis, and that he came here to do his very best for the American people. Yet we attempt to charge him with willful violation of the law.
Operational control of the border means zero persons coming across. This has not been the case as relates to any Secretary no matter what administration. Yet we have failed in this process of false smoke and mirrors to allow us to be able to articulate any charge that might constitute high crimes and misdemeanors. We failed to provide evidence to support the charges such as they are.
We have failed to name the proper target for impeachment in a policy dispute. We have failed to process anything against Secretary Mayorkas, and we could not, in any way, bring anything to suggest that he violated the law or that he benefited from any aspect of his work.
This Secretary has been denied due process. This is smoke and mirrors. The Constitution, which is the foundation of this land, is true. There have been no high crimes and misdemeanors or bribery. This is an impeachment that should be immediately dismissed.
Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the Articles of Impeachment.
Madam Speaker, it is a sad day that the House has been convened to consider an impeachment bill against the current Secretary of Homeland Security--a measure that is without merit or consideration of the consequences to the agency or how this action may undermine the current challenges the nation is facing.
While this impeachment resolution bears no meaningful or serious merits, I offered an amendment for consideration by the Rules Committee that would strike Article 1 of H. Res 863--Impeaching Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, because he is not accused of committing any high crimes or misdemeanors.
Article I of the bill accuses him of ``Willful and Systematic Refusal to Comply with the Law.
Secretary Mayorkas has not committed ``Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors''--the United States Constitution's standard, for an impeachment.
Secretary Mayorkas is carrying out his duties faithfully.
House Republicans may not approve of the Biden administration's policies, but policy differences are not grounds for impeachment under the Constitution.
House Republicans are trying to distract from their inability to govern and score political points with their extreme political base by impeaching the Secretary.
Rather than abusing their power as the majority in the House of Representatives with an unjustified impeachment process, they should focus on keeping the government open and join with Democrats to provide border personnel the funding they need to do their job.
I regret that of the two hearings held that they did not include any majority witnesses that were Constitutional Scholars nor a minority hearing to allow opposing views to be aired, nor the target of the impeachment Secretary Mayorkas being allowed to come before the committee in his defense.
This is the standard set by prior impeachment proceedings but ignored by the majority-controlled Homeland Security Committee.
In 1776 the Framers declared the self-evident and later the universal truth that all persons are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As important, the Framers declared that ``to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.''
This genius of self-government is the Framers' gift to us and America's gift to the world, and for nearly 250 years the world has looked upon the United States with wonder, awe, and envy not just for its awesome powers and achievements, but for being the exemplar to which most freedom-loving nations aspire.
But as President Lincoln reminded us at Gettysburg, the proposition that a people can govern themselves is not to be taken for granted; it is a proposition that will be tested time and again and it is for us, the living, to highly resolve to commit ourselves to the great task always before us, that government of the people, by the people, and for the people not perish from the earth.
As Thomas Paine said in his time, the past fourteen years were times that tried one's soul. The nation was tested, severely so, by what can only be described as the modern-day Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: a deadly pandemic, economic devastation unseen since the Great Depression, social justice unrest, and the very real threat of authoritarianism.
While the threat posed by these challenges are still with us to varying extent, we can all rejoice that the nation withstood the challenge, e pluribus unum, by standing together as ``We The People.''
President Lincoln reminded us that in times of testing and challenge that ``the fiery trial through which we pass will mark us down in honor or dishonor until the latest generation'' but that so long as the people ``retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government' in the short space of four years.''
And Lincoln was right, for on Election Day 2020, Americans by a substantial majority, voted to withhold consent to govern from an incumbent administration and confer it upon another.
That act of self-government and sovereign expression was solemnized on January 20, 2021, at noon when Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris took the oath of office as the 46th President and 59th Vice-President of the United States.
The Philadelphia Miracle of 1789 endures but only because we Americans resolve that it does and work to make it so.
The President takes the oath of office pledging to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.
As does every one of my congressional colleagues, I have sacredly pledged true faith and allegiance in defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to execute the duties of the office well and faithfully I hold. I do this ever mindful that the purpose of our form of government is ``to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to ensure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty for posterity.''
But we all have a responsibility to preserve and strengthen this constitutional republic and pass it on to the next generation by engaging in robust, lawful, and peaceful civic activity to hold our government to account and to peaceably assemble when necessary to petition for a redress of grievances as shown by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington, following the example of Mahatma Gandhi; by John Lewis and the Civil Rights foot soldiers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; by Elizabeth Cady Staton and Lucretia Mott at Seneca Falls; by Cesar Chavez leading the fight for human dignity of farmworkers, and by Black Lives Matter demonstrators protesting inequalities in the criminal justice system.
For the work of democracy is never complete, our union is always in the process of being made more perfect.
The ingredients for good policy are competence, capability, and willingness to put aside partisanship and place national interest first.
At this moment in our nation's history Republicans are attempting to impeach Secretary Mayorkas not for any malfeasance or wrongdoing--but because they disagree with his actions carrying out the Biden administration's border and immigration policies.
Using policy differences as grounds for impeachment is an abusive political action that the Founders rejected as antithetical to the U.S. Constitution.
Republicans have not alleged that the Secretary has committed an impeacbable offense, so their ``reports'' attempting to legitimize their unfounded case for impeachment effort contain blatant misinformation and politically motivated rhetoric, such as criticizing the termination of harmful but barely utilized Trump-era immigration and border policies, which were not laws--a fact they either do not understand or willfully ignore.
Such a political theater has no basis in the history of American constitutional law, as Article II of the U.S. Constitution sets the standard for impeachment of ``civil officers'' as ``Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.''
The Biden administration's departure from the failed, cruel, and sometimes unlawful border and immigration policies of the previous administration is certainly not an impeachable offense.
Impeachment under these circumstances is not a constitutional remedy for political and policy differences.
Impeachment is an extraordinary remedy reserved for the most egregious political offenses, not policy differences. Indeed, Madison objected to the term ``maladministration'' being added to the list of impeachable offenses during the Constitutional Convention because it would upset the separation of powers.
The first and only impeachment of a Cabinet official occurred in 1876 following extensive evidence of corruption.
Republican Congressman Tom McClintock, the Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, described Rep. Greene's attempt to impeach Secretary Mayorkas over policy disagreements as a ``perilous path'' for future governance.
Chairman McClintock went on to argue that the redefinition of impeachment found in H. Res. 863 ``would utterly destroy the separation of powers at the heart of our Constitution.
While these are the basis for this Committee not moving forward in the process, there are compelling reasons why the Committee should be actively engaged in Immigration Reform.
Impeachment is not a punishment, sought to be inflicted when one branch of government merely disagrees with or dislikes what a coordinate branch has done.
It is a serious remedy designed to prevent abuses of power and is designed to ensure that ours remains a government of, by, and for the people.
This is about the duty of the President of the United States--you do not impeach people because you disagree with their approach to their service to the country or to the provisions on their policy. We do not impeach people on that basis.
No, this resolution does not provide any meaningful or sincere effort to protect the American people.
Rather, this resolution sets forth nothing more than a partisan fishing expedition and should be rebuked as such.
Impeachment is serious, yet here we are engaged in a baseless political stunt to impeach our current President.
The U.S. Constitution governs the order of our Nation, and it dictates the work of the Congress.
Article I detail the powers of the House and the exercising of these powers as they relate to the coordinate, coequa1 branches of government, codified in Article II, and Article III: three equal branches of government coexisting and cohesively working to provide oversight to the respective actions of the Congress, the Executive and Judiciary.
Specifically, Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 indicates that the ``House of Representatives . . . shall have the sole power of impeachment.'' Article II states that the ``The President . . . shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors''; Article II also requires that the ``President take care that the laws are faithfully executed.''
That language is stark and clear--and throughout our history it has been used in varying periods where the assessment was that the law has been breached.
Sometimes Congresses are concerned that the weight and view of the American people should be considered. Sometimes they are moved by the urgency of the matter.
This has worked, with challenges of course, since 1789, yet the outright abuse of our constitution to use impeachment as a political tool is an abomination of our congressional duties.
As constitutional scholars have long laid out the historical guardrails and mandates upon which must heed, I would like to point to a few salient remarks from the September 28, 2023, Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing entitled ``The Basis for the Impeachment Inquiry of President Joseph R. Biden'' as reminders for us all here today.
In the testimony of Michael J. Gerhardt, Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he highlighted the clear warning from Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, and what he foresaw in the dangers of trivializing impeachment through petty partisanship.
As quoted in Alexander Hamilton, No. 65, the Federalist Papers (1961), he states that impeachment may ``agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with preexisting factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the relative strength of the parties, than by the demonstrations of innocence or guilt.''
As Professor Gerhardt noted, ``in other words, an impeachment proceeding, including the initiation of an impeachment inquiry, must rise above petty partisanship in order to ensure its legitimacy.''
And as aptly stated in the testimony of Johnathon Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University School of Law, in highlighting the carefully crafted powers vested in the House of Representatives pursuant to Art. I, Sec. 2, Cl. 5 is that:
``The Framers debated and crafted this standard and process to avoid an ``anything goes'' mentality. That was the reason our Framers opposed the ``maladministration'' standards as too malleable and indeterminate. While we continue to have passionate and good-faith debates over the meaning of the high crimes and misdemeanors standard, it is not intended to give the House carte blanche for any impulsive impeachment theory.''
Nearly fifty years ago, my predecessor, Barbara Jordan, of Texas' 18th Congressional District, declared, in the first presidential impeachment inquiry in more than a century, that:
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.'' She noted ``those are impeachable `who behave amiss or betray their public trust'' (quoting from the North Carolina ratification convention).
In this vein, we should not be here today in efforts to betray and diminish our Constitution and rule of law.
The unsubstantiated accusations, that the President of the United States has abused his powers and that his conduct is in dereliction of his duties as President is flatly outrageous.
When the Framers of our Constitution designed our government, they bifurcated power between the federal and state governments, and divided among the branches.
They vested in Congress the capacity to make the laws, and in the Executive the power to faithfully execute those laws.
Because the House enjoyed a natural superiority, as most representatives of the passions of the populace, the Framers vested in the House of Representatives the sole power of impeachment and made the Senate the judges.
Yet, entirely unlike the incredulous and now confirmed illegality of President Trump's behavior while in office, President Biden has certainly not earned the same stain of impeachment from the House of Representatives and his conduct absolutely does not merit conviction and removal from office by the Senate.
When the Founders inserted the Impeachment Clause in Article I, Section 2, Clause 5, they did so to preserve our democracy, protect the American people, and to prevent the abuses and excesses of the Chief Executive.
The Constitution has served our nation well for over two hundred years.
Yes, in order to keep faith with the Framers and with our future, we must preserve, protect and defend that Constitution and its provisions.
This impeachment resolution, however, is not one that is within the national interest but a disgrace to our government and its entrusted duties.
The reason given for the Impeachment is the border crisis, one that this body has not taken any steps to address, but the Senate has sent over a border bill to address the border policy issues raised during the two Impeachment hearings.
The response from the House is to stay the Senate Border bill is dead on arrival-sight unseen and no counteroffer made.
As a result of lack of Congressional action, the Biden Administration is using the tools it has available to secure the border and build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system.
Secretary Mayorkas as head of DHS began a whole-of-government approach in Fall 2021 to prepare for the end of Title 42.
In May 2022, Secretary Mayorkas issued the six-pillar plan that outlined preparations to prepare for surges in migration and the lifting of Title 42.
The plan showed measurable success.
The power of immigration reform to reduce unlawful entry is proven through the Biden Administration method of promoting the largest expansion of legal pathways for safe, orderly, and humane migration in decades, and put in new rules to encourage people to use those lawful pathways instead of making the dangerous journey to try to enter unlawfully.
The success of the lifting of Title 42 was not sustainable without resources and changes being made to immigration laws.
Instead, Republican governors have become the poster children for increased irregular migration because of their work to send people from the Southern Border to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, which sent a message that unlawful border crossings were welcomed.
The final ingredient is legislative action by Congress to address increasing the capacity of immigration courts to prioritize the orderly and fair processing of asylum claims of certain recent arrivals, while ensuring those not seeking protection or who don't qualify are promptly returned to their country of origin.
The Administration is continuing to aggressively increase legal pathways, enforce our immigration laws, target smugglers who prey and profit on vulnerable migrants and seek to traffic drugs into our country, and work collaboratively with cities and states that are impacted.
Republicans who have used immigration as a wedge issue attempted to derail the President's efforts.
It is time to focus on the places and communities receiving new residents and families to make sure the transition a win--win for new immigrants and communities.
Providing Resources to Larger Urban Areas and Rural Areas.
Democrats have proposed legislation, such as the Dream Act and the American Dream and Promise Act, that would provide a pathway to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, also known as Dreamers.
Democrats are focused on providing resources to communities receiving migrants, implementing policies to ensure an orderly, humane border, and keeping the government funded.
Democrats also recognize that while there are near-term costs to receiving migrants, immigrants contribute significantly to the U.S. economy, fuel our growth, and provide a net benefit to our country's finances by paying billions in taxes annually.
Democrats also support comprehensive immigration reform that would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and improve border security measures while respecting the rights and dignity of all individuals.
In July 2021, the House passed a bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers and their families, called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.
This would protect workers from exploitation and abuse and would provide stability for the agricultural industry.
Democrats have advocated for a comprehensive immigration reform package that would address the root causes of migration, improve border security, and create legal pathways for people to enter the U.S. lawfully.
The Biden-Harris Administration, under the direction of Secretary Mayorkas, are showing Congress, the nation and the world what is indeed possible when immigration is not treated like an offense to the nation instead of the fuel that drives our economy and injects vitality into our communities.
Because of joint Congressional and White House support since early 2021, DHS and CBP increased their border holding capacity by over a third through the construction of new facilities.
CBP has increased the efficiency of migrant processing and reduced the time noncitizens spend in temporary holding by 30 percent.
Over the years, I worked with my fellow Democrats and Republican Members of this Committee to make sure that these unaccompanied children stay safe and have a legal documentation in the United States, while the Republican Party sadly has steadfastly opposed all the legislations that benefits these children.
I ask the Rules Committee to reject this Impeachment and begin plans to consider the bill sent from the Senate for a resolution to the Border crisis.