Multiple conservative legal scholars have attacked the House Republican Conference’s attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayrokas as unconstitutional, according to letters and op-eds published on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Mayorkas has been the target of House Republicans’ ire since he assumed office, owing to the dramatic increase in the number of illegal immigrants who have entered the United States via its southern border with Mexico, which rose to nearly 2.5 million in Fiscal Year 2023, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The frustration with Mayorkas’ policies and previous testimony before Congress has led to an impeachment inquiry against him, which conservative legal scholars attacked in comments published on Tuesday.
“[B]eing a bad person is not impeachable—or many cabinets would be largely empty,” wrote Jonathan Turley, the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University Law School and Fox News Contributor, who has broadly opposed the prosecution of former President Donald Trump, in The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “There is no jurisdictional question for Mayorkas, but there is also no current evidence that he is corrupt or committed an impeachable offense. He can be legitimately accused of effectuating an open border policy, but that is a disagreement on policy that is traced to the President.”
Constitutional Law Experts on the Impeachment Proceedings Against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro… by Daily Caller News Foundation on Scribd
The House Committee on Homeland Security held an initial hearing on Wednesday regarding the impeachment inquiry into Alejandro Mayorkas. The effort has been backed by House Republican leaders and comes after five previous attempts to impeach Mayorkas by rank-and-file members, most of which were filed by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“As scholars of the Constitution, considering the facts currently known and the charges publicly described, we hereby express our view that an impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas would be utterly unjustified as a matter of constitutional law,” wrote another group of constitutional scholars, including several conservatives, to House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green. ” Their proposed grounds for impeaching Secretary Mayorkas are the stuff of ordinary (albeit impassioned) policy disagreement in the field of immigration enforcement. If allegations like this were sufficient to justify impeachment, the separation of powers would be permanently destabilized.”
That group included former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, who served during the George H.W. Bush administration. At Wednesday’s hearing, Frank Bowman, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Missouri School of Law, and contributor for the Federalist Society, agreed, testifying that “[d]islike of a president’s policy is certainly not one of [the grounds for impeachment],” which earned the rebuke of some House Republicans.
The last cabinet member to be impeached was Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876, during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant.
“We’ve never had a cabinet secretary who openly flouted federal law, who refused to enforce the law, and then comes before Congress, raises his hand, takes the oath and tells us things that he knows and everyone knows are obviously untrue, insisting that the border is secure,” said Johnson at a press conference on Wednesday. He admitted his agency is currently releasing over 85% of the illegals who come across the border. He knows exactly what’s happening. He’s doing nothing to stop it.”