The following is part of a response by Rep. Dan Goldman (D-New York) to the Republican's attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.
On Tuesday, House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee completed their rushed, baseless and legally flawed impeachment “investigation” of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for trumped-up, never-used charges relating to the secretary’s efforts to secure our southern border. The irony here, of course, is that the ones who have failed to secure the southern border are, in fact, those same Republicans, operating at the behest of Donald Trump.
As one senior congressional aide recently put it: “It’s very clear that a large group of Republicans in the Senate and the House no longer want to do border security. … Trump wouldn’t have his issue to run on. That’s what’s going on here: They don’t want to give up that issue.”
Keep in mind, that aide who so succinctly summed up the ongoing border legislation negotiations is a Republican, not a Democrat.
Democrats, led by Mayorkas and President Joe Biden, have been working around the clock for the past two months with a bipartisan group of senators to address the issues at the border through bipartisan legislation — which Republicans have insisted on as a condition for providing aid to our democratic allies around the world. As Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., has recognized, the border policy package that is near agreement in the Senate would include more Republican priorities than have ever been passed or would ever be achieved under a Republican administration.
In a recent closed-door meeting with his Senate Republican colleagues, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky reportedly shared “that the party used to be united in finding a solution” but that the politics “have changed” and Trump “wants the issue [of border security] for his 2024 campaign more than an actual solution.”
This goes beyond your regular election-year political cynicism. For the entire 118th Congress, I have witnessed firsthand House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee using security concerns at the southern border as a political cudgel without making any effort in a divided government to reach across the aisle to actually solve problems through bipartisan legislation. And make no mistake, legislation — not executive action — is the only way to fix our broken immigration system.
Even within its limited executive authority, the Biden administration has taken several actions to address the situation at the border by streamlining the asylum process while expediting eligibility decisions, preventing unlawful entry between ports of entry and reducing the pressure on the system by allowing people from specific countries suffering from acute humanitarian problems to gain lawful access under certain limiting conditions.
In response to these efforts, Republican attorneys general around the country sued the Biden administration to prevent the implementation of these policy changes designed to stop the unlawful entry of migrants across the southern border and stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum.
Think about that: The Republicans are working to create and perpetuate the very problems upon which they are basing their impeachment effort of Mayorkas. . . .
To put it simply, Republicans would prefer to have chaos at the border than actually solve our border problems —because they care more about winning elections than finding solutions for the American people.
