The House Homeland Security Committee has released its articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Gus Mayorkas. You can read them here. Going over them I’m struck by two things.
First, the Secretary is accused of willfully and systematically refusing to comply with immigration law, most notably by both allowing undocumented migrants to be paroled enmasse if they are from certain countries, and for directing the CBP and ICE to look at the person’s whole case before detaining and removing, not just any single decision. The allegation is that these people have been turned loose in the US, never to be seen again. Which is horse feathers.
According to the American Immigration Council:
- 83% of nondetained immigrants with completed or pending removal cases attended all of their hearings.
- 96% of nondetained immigrants represented by a lawyer attended all of their hearings.
- 15% of those who were ordered deported because they did not appear in court successfully reopened their cases and had their removal orders rescinded. In some years, as many as 20% of all orders of removal for missing court were later overturned.
- Individuals who apply for relief from removal have especially high rates of appearance.
- Appearance rates vary strongly based on the immigration court’s location.
Now that sounds bad but consider that criminal courts across the US have Failure to Appear Rates of 15%-30% for people on bail. Call me nuts, but if these numbers represent migrant appear at higher rates then domestic criminals, and all migrants appear at the same rates, then the Secretary’s parole program seems to be statistically effective. Interestingly, one of the groups that is dinged for being paroled are Afghans admitted after the US withdrawal. Apparently, Republicans don’t want to help the people they ding Joe Biden for “abandoning.” There’s also the minorly inconvenient fact that SCOTUS ruled twice in 2023 that the President – and by extension his cabinet secretaries – have discretion in how the enforce immigration laws.
The other thing this article misses – which I hope the democrats on the committee go after – is whether DHS has the funding (and in the right places in its budget) to actually detain everyone the Committee thinks should be detained. Impeaching a guy for following the letter of the fiscal law Congress sets with its appropriations (or doesn’t as is the case this year) is cowardly.
The second article says the Secretary should be impeached and removed for violating the public trust, specifically for lying to Congress about terms like “Operational control” or “secure.” Essentially, because the Secretary believes something different then the Committee, and uses language they don’t like. Frankly if we were going to impeach cabinet secretaries for this sort of “lying” we’d have a multi decade backlog of cases to try.
I know full well that there are border problems. So does Secretary Mayorkas. So does Joe Biden. But as was recently pointed out by my fellow OT author David Thornton, the GOP isn’t serious about doing anything to address the situation. This Kabuki theatre dance of impeachment is more of the same. Luckily for the GOP, the media will take it seriously, so their cowardly obstruction can remain hidden.
Donald Trump wants to campaign on the myth that the border is out of control and there’s some kind of invasion going on (as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lied about in a recent press release of dubious Constitutionality that literally revives an antebellum political theory), and Biden is either tolerating it or actually happy about it. So that’s part of what’s going on here too. The GOP doesn’t need facts about this, it needs noise.
If we cared about factsthe law is being enforced. Detentions, arrests, and deportations are through the roof since the Biden Administration took over. (See: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics.) But it’s not that Mayorkas isn’t enforcing the law at all. It’s that he isn’t being cruel about it by keeping the bulk of the people concerned in the CBP “encounters” detained in prison-like conditions for the months and months it will take for their cases to be processed.
To the extent that there will be a substantive criticism of Mayorkas floated in the upcoming impeachment, it’ll be that not enough kids have been separated from their parents with inadequate recordkeeping to reunite them later; not enough of those kids are sleeping on concrete floors with astronaut blankets; not enough strip searches are being done; not enough contacting oppressive governments back home is underway to ostensibly verify identities and lack of other criminal activities but also to tip off those oppressive governments whose families ought be harassed.Report
If the House wants more detentions – more cruelty – it needs to appropriate more money. But that would be solving a problem. Which the House clearly doesn’t want to do.Report
This is where I get my pedantic word definition mojo on. Ain’t no way the southern border can be defined as “secure”. Gus should know this and not use the word. It gives the American public the false assumption that there is no problem. There is.
Burt, your statement ” It’s that he isn’t being cruel about it by keeping the bulk of the people concerned in the CBP “encounters” detained in prison-like conditions for the months and months it will take for their cases to be processed.” Please explain why you think this is cruel. Why should we let folks who we know nothing about, loose in our country until AFTER we’ve confirmed they aren’t a danger? I doubt that it’s cruel by their standards.Report
Based on the underlying assumption, the border has never been “secure.” It sure wasn’t under TFG.Report
…you are aware that the government literally shut down because “TFG” asked for money to make the border secure, right?Report
He asked for money to build a wall. When he didn’t get it – because Congress isn’t a rubber stamp – Ted Cruz shut down government for him. He then went on to try and steal the money from the DoD.
But as Damon notes below, the border wasn’t secure then either.Report
So yes, you agree with me that “TFG” tried to do something about border security and Congress refused to permit it?Report
Congress has refused to do anything about border security and immigration policy since Reagan. TO my knowledge this is the first time they have tried to impeach a sitting cabinet secretary over their failures.Report
I think the question is can it be secured?Report
“Based on the underlying assumption, the border has never been “secure.” It sure wasn’t under TFG.”
Frankly, I doubt I’d call it secure at any point is history. Certainly not within my lifetime, and certainly it gotten worse in my lifetime.Report
So the Secretary tells the truth and steps into one mine field, or uses language that his predecessors used and steps into another minefield. Which is now an article of impeachment.
Helluva way to run the proverbial railroad.Report
“So the Secretary tells the truth” well, no. Again the definition of “secure” and all. Someone that highly paid and educated should have the capability to “wordsmith” better. Hell, I do it all the time. “No sir, to the best of my understanding, and my research, the answer to your question is “answer”. This leaves me wiggle room for late arriving info, new facts presenting themselves, etc.Report