House Republicans are poised to hold a key vote Tuesday on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over what they call his deliberate and systematic refusal to enforce immigration laws, with border security one of the will be the most important election issues in 2024.

The Homeland Security Committee is in the middle of a daylong hearing on two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas

rare

indictment of a Cabinet official not seen in nearly 150 years, as Republicans adopt Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s tough deportation approach.

“Secretary Mayorkas’ actions and decisions have left us no choice but to move forward with articles of impeachment,” said Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.).

The articles allege that Mayorkas willfully and systematically refused to comply with federal immigration laws amid a record surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, and that he has betrayed public trust in his claims to Congress that the border is safe. A committee vote would send the articles to the full House for a vote next week.

“We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer,” Green said.

In an unusual personal appeal, Mayorkas wrote in a letter to the committee that it should work with the Biden administration to update the nation’s broken and outdated immigration laws for the 21st century and an era of record migration on a global level.

We need a legislative solution and only Congress can provide it, Mayorkas wrote in the sharp letter to the panel’s chairman.

Mayorkas never spoke up on his own behalf during the hasty impeachment proceedings. He and the committee could not agree on a date, but based it on his own background as a child brought to the U.S. by his parents who fled Cuba, and on his career spent prosecuting criminals.

Your false accusations do not confuse me or distract me from public service, he wrote.

Green, the Republican committee chairman, disparaged Mayorkas’ letter as an 11th response to the committee that was inadequate and inappropriate for a Cabinet secretary.

Rarely has a Cabinet member faced an impeachment without high crimes and misdemeanors, and Democrats on the panel called the proceedings a stunt and a sham that could set a chilling precedent for other officials caught in policy disputes by disagreeing representatives with the president’s approach.

This is a terrible day for the committee, the United States, the Constitution and our great country, said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee’s top Democrat.

Referring to Trump’s campaign slogan, Thompson said the MAGA-led impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is a baseless sham.

The House proceedings against Mayorkas have left Capitol Hill curiously split, as the Senate works closely with the secretary on a bipartisan border security package that is now on life support.

The package senators are negotiating with Mayorkas could be the most consequential bipartisan immigration proposal in a decade. Or it could collapse into political failure as Republicans, and some Democrats, run from the effort.

Trump has tried to suppress the deal during his campaign and in private conversations. “I’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Trump said in Las Vegas this weekend.

President Biden said in his own campaign speeches in South Carolina that if Congress sends him a bill with emergency powers, he will close the border right now to control migration.

I did everything I could, Biden told reporters on Tuesday before leaving for a campaign-related trip to Florida. Give me power “through legislation, which he said is something he has been asked to do” since the day I came to power.

Republicans are focused on the secretaries handling the southern border, which has seen an increasing number of migrants over the past year, many seeking asylum in the U.S. at a time when drug cartels are using the border with Mexico to smuggle people and ships. deadly fentanyl to the United States.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a Trump ally who is often mentioned as a vice presidential pick, called it an invasion.

Republicans argue that the Biden administration and Mayorkas either abolished policies under Trump that had controlled migration or instituted their own policies that encouraged migrants from around the world to enter the U.S. illegally through the southern border.

Speaker Mike Johnson said Biden and Mayorkas have created a catastrophe at the border, and he criticized the emerging Senate package. The Republican leader said the president is now trying to shift the blame to Congress for its failure to update immigration laws.

Republicans also accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress, citing comments about border security or the vetting of Afghans being transported to the US following a military withdrawal from their country.

It is high time for impeachment, said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who called Mayorkas the architect of the border problems. He’s got what’s coming to him.

Impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives against Mayorkas moved forward quickly in January, as Republicans dragged a separate impeachment inquiry into Biden over business dealings with his son Hunter Biden.

Democrats argue that Mayorkas is acting under his legal authority at the department and that criticism of him does not rise to the level of impeachment.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called the proceedings a political stunt ordered by Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a Trump ally who pushed the resolution to the ballot.

During the hearing, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-

California

Long Beach) pointed out Trump’s comments, echoing Adolf Hitler, that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the US

and characterized and to

his proposals to militarize the border as extreme, arguing that the impeachment proceedings were all about getting Donald Trump re-elected.

It is unclear

or

Republicans in the House of Representatives will have the support of their ranks to push ahead with impeachment proceedings after a committee vote, especially now that they have a slim majority and Democrats are expected to vote against it.

Last year, eight Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to suspend Greene’s proposed impeachment resolution rather than send it to committee, although many of them have since indicated they are open to it.

If the House of Representatives agrees to impeach Mayorkas, the charges will then go to the Senate for a trial. In 1876, the House impeached Secretary of Defense William Belknap for kickbacks in government contracts, but the Senate acquitted him at a trial.