House Votes To Defund Mayorkas

The GOP-led House voted on Wednesday to defund Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Biden administration official who was impeached by the lower chamber earlier this year in a rebuke of his handling of the border crisis.

A group of 193 Republican lawmakers voted to pass the amendment that Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) sponsored for appropriations legislation that aims to provide tens of billions of dollars to the Homeland Security Department (DHS) in the next fiscal year.

All voting Democrats, 172 of them, and one Republican opposed the measure. Seventy-two members, including 28 Republicans and 44 Democrats, did not cast a vote on the amendment when it was brought to the House floor.

“The House just passed my amendment to defund the office of the DHS Secretary,” Biggs said in a post to X. “Alejandro Mayorkas — who was impeached earlier this year — doesn’t deserve a single penny from American taxpayers.”

Reporter Anthony Adragna underscored it likely faces long odds. “Similar efforts have been adopted in the past, only to be stripped out as the House and Senate resolve differences between their versions of spending legislation,” he wrote for POLITICO.

A different amendment from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), which would have reduced Mayorkas’ salary to $1, failed to pass. Another of her offerings to block DHS from partnering with the State Department for “Safe Mobility Offices” did succeed.

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House lawmakers approved the impeachment resolution by a 214-213 vote in mid-February, making Mayorkas the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached since 1876. Three Republican lawmakers broke ranks and joined Democrats in opposing it.

The two articles they passed accused Mayorkas of “willfully and systemically” refusing to comply with federal immigration laws and alleged he “breached the public trust” with false statements and obstructing lawful oversight of DHS.

However, in April, the Democrat-controlled Senate voted to quash the articles shortly after members of the upper chamber were sworn in as jurors and fought over how to conduct the trial. The impeachment managers did not even have a chance to speak.

Back in January, Mayorkas claimed he was facing “false accusations” that “do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted.”