Mayorkas impeachment: Why was the Homeland Secretary impeached and what happens now?

House Republicans sent two articles of impeachment against Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on Tuesday two months after they were narrowly approved. On Wednesday, Senators will be sworn in as jurors and decide whether a full trial will be held.

Should the trial go forward, something that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has signaled that he has no plans of doing, it would take a two-thirds majority to convict in the Democratic-controlled upper chamber. In February, Secretary Mayorkas became the first Cabinet level member of a presidential administration to be impeached in nearly 150 years, and the second in US history.

It took two attempts for House Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the lower chamber, to successfully pass the articles of impeachment. The final tally was 214 to 213, with three GOP members joining all of the Democrats to oppose the measure against Biden’s chief of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Republican impeachment managers will be seeking to use a trial to highlight the failures of the Biden administration’s handling of immigration policy at the southern border.

Why was Mayorkas impeached?

Two articles of impeachment were brought against Secretary Mayorkas for: “Willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “Breach of public trust.” Republicans accuse Mayorkas of refusing to enforce border security laws in a general attack on the Biden administration’s immigration policy. However, impeachment is designed to remove officials “for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” which this does not rise to as many are pointing out across the political spectrum.

“History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games,” President Joe Biden said when the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas passed the House.

“Those GOP lawmakers with genuine concerns about the border should want Congress to deliver more border security,” he added in a post on X. “Sadly, the same Republicans pushing this impeachment are rejecting bipartisan plans to strengthen border security at this very moment.”

Republicans in the Senate have said that they will not vote for a border security bill that one of their own, Sen. James Lankford, worked out with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. It has been endorsed by both the acting chief of US Customs and Border Patrol and the union representing Border Patrol agents, and while the latter said it isn’t “perfect,” it is “far better than the status quo.”

However, former President Donald Trump came out against it, wanting to use the issue to hammer Biden on the campaign trail. Even if the bill made it out of the Senate, Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill would be dead on arrival in the House.

What happens now to the Homeland Secretary?

Just as during former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments, a first in US history, the Senate will take up the matter in the form of a trial. In order to remove Mayorkas, two thirds of Senators would have to vote to convict him. Expectations of the impeachment succeeding are quite low given that the Senate is nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans with the former in control.

That wouldn’t necessarily have to happen though as Casey Burgat, the director of the Legislative Affairs Program at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management explained to CBS. “[The Constitution] says that the Senate ‘shall’ have the sole power to hold a trial,” he said.

“But that ‘shall’ is doing a lot of work there and it doesn’t mandate it. And in a lot of people’s eyes, it doesn’t force it.”

Senate rules, he went on to explain, suggest that once the upper chamber receives the House’s articles of impeachment from the House, they must schedule a trial to begin the following day. However, “they’ve got a lot of options to kind of rejigger the rule,” Burgat said.

A majority could vote to “reinterpret” the rules which would open a number of avenues that could speed up the process, delay or outright dismiss the impeachment. It all depends on the “entrepreneurship of the people there and how much the majority is willing to not do that.”

Schumer is expected to offer a motion to dismiss, which would need a simple majority to pass, saying that holding a trial would set an “awful precedent for Congress.” Sen. Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republicans in the upper chamber, however, said “never before has the Senate agreed to a motion to table articles of impeachment.” He noted that it has always been the case that either a trial was held or the matter was referred to a special committee for further review.

Even so, some senators have indicated that they may not outright dismiss the impeachment attempt including some Democrats facing re-election this year in competitive races. Hard-right Republican senators said that they would use procedural hurdles to avoid a trial being dismissed or tabled.