The US House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with the Republican majority determined to punish the Biden administration for its handling of the US-Mexico border after it failed last week over a politically embarrassing setback.

The evening roll call proved tight, with Speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare Republican majority unable to handle many defections or absences despite staunch Democratic opposition to the impeachment of Mayorkas, the first Cabinet secretary to be indicted in nearly 150 years.

In a historic rebuke, the House impeached Mayorkas 214-213. With the return of Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) to shore up the GOP’s numbers after leaving Washington for cancer care and a northeasterly storm affecting some others, Republicans rebounded despite dissent from their own ranks .

Johnson (R-La.) posted a clenched-fist photo with Scalise, announcing his cancer remission, and said he was looking forward to having him back in the trenches this week!

President Biden said in a statement released after the vote that history will not be kind to Republicans in the House of Representatives for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship, targeting an honorable official to play petty political games.

The Republican Party’s attempt to oust Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border has taken on an atmosphere of political desperation as Republicans have struggled to deliver on their priorities.

Mayorkas faced two articles of impeachment filed by the Homeland Security Committee, arguing that he willfully and systematically refused to enforce existing immigration laws and that he had betrayed the public trust by lying to Congress and to say the border was safe.

But critics of the impeachment effort said the charges against Mayorkas amount to a policy dispute over Biden’s border policies that barely rise to the Constitution’s bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.

The House had initially launched an impeachment inquiry against Biden over his son’s affairs, but instead turned its attention to Mayorkas after Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia had moved the debate forward after the panels’ months-long investigation.

The charges against Mayorkas were then expected to go to the Senate for a trial, but neither Democratic nor Republican senators have shown interest in the case and it could be postponed to a committee indefinitely.

Border security has risen to the top of the list of campaign issues, with Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insisting he will launch the largest domestic deportation operation in US history if he retakes the White House.

Several Republicans in the House of Representatives have prepared legislation to begin deporting migrants temporarily admitted to the U.S. under the Biden administration’s policies, many while awaiting rulings on asylum claims.

We have no choice, Trump said in stark language at a weekend rally in South Carolina.

At the same time, Johnson rejected a bipartisan Senate border security package but failed to advance Republicans’ own proposal, which is a nonstarter in the Senate.

Three Republican representatives broke ranks last week over Mayorkas’ impeachment, which several leading conservative pundits have dismissed as baseless and a waste of time. With a majority of 219 to 212, Johnson had few votes to save.

Mayorkas is not the only Biden administration official that Republicans in the House of Representatives want to oust.

They have filed legislation to impeach a long list, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Atty. General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III.

Never before has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached, and it was nearly 150 years ago that the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned before the vote.

Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, laid the border crisis squarely on Congress for its failure to update immigration laws at a time of global migration.

There is no question that we have a challenge, a crisis at the border, Mayorkas said on NBC this weekend. And there is no doubt that Congress must solve this problem.

Johnson and Republicans have pushed back, arguing that the Biden administration could take executive action, as Trump did, to stop the number of crossings, though the courts have questioned and reversed some of those efforts.

“We are always exploring what options are available to us and that are permitted under the law,” Mayorkas said.

Last week’s failed vote to impeach Mayorkas, a surprise outcome rarely seen on such a high-profile issue, was a stunning display in the House that has endured months of Republican Party chaos since the House’s ouster. previous Speaker of the House of Representatives.

One of the Republican mainstays, Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who had served as a Marine, announced this weekend that he would not seek re-election in the fall, joining a growing list of serious Republican lawmakers heading for the Exit.

At the time, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who had been hospitalized for emergency abdominal surgery, made a surprise arrival, rode into the chamber in scrubs and socks to vote no, leaving the votes tied, and failed.

Obviously, you feel good when you can make a difference, Green said, describing his difficult route from hospital bed to the floor of the House. All I was doing was what I was elected to do, and that was casting my vote on the issues of our time, using the best judgment available to me.

Republicans are hopeful that the special elections in New York will further strengthen their ranks, but the outcome of that race is uncertain.