(Headline USA) House Republicans have gone silent on their past threats to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The GOP made Mayorkas’s impeachment a top issue during the November midterms, but lawmakers have yet to act on a resolution to remove the immigration czar.
Two impeachment resolutions against Mayorkas were introduced last year, but have not been touched by House GOP leadership.
Two GOP aides admitted to the Washington Examiner this week that Republican leadership would rather focus on bolstering border security via legislative efforts. No impeachment action has been taken against Mayorkas, said one of the aides, because Republicans are “hard at work right now on a border package.”
However, Republicans are “still working on their investigations into Mayorkas’s handling of the border crisis and the facts will dictate their next steps,” the aide added.
Even Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has publicly distanced himself from outright demands for Mayorkas’s impeachment, opting to hold further interviews with Border Patrol agents instead.
“These interviews will inform future oversight so we can hold Secretary Mayorkas and others accountable for the border crisis,” Comer said in a statement on Monday.
This is a far cry from the pledge last November by now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to force Mayorkas to resign on Jan. 3 of this year.
If Mayorkas refused to do so, said McCarthy at the time, Republicans would investigate “every order, every action, and every failure and determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry.”
Senate Republicans, on the other hand, are still vocal about removing Mayorkas from office.
On Tuesday, for example, during a hearing on the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed budget, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., blasted Mayorkas for turning a blind eye to the migrant crisis and the “indentured servitude” of migrant children.
“You have in every stage facilitated this modern-day indentured servitude of minor children,” Hawley said to Mayorkas. “Why should you not be impeached for this?”
