House GOP releases impeachment articles in bid to oust Homeland Security's Mayorkas

The House Committee on Homeland Security on Sunday released draft articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

In its 20-page resolution, the Republican-led committee accuses Mayorkas of high crimes and misdemeanors, including "willfully" disregarding immigration law.

The two articles accuse Mayorkas of "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law" for failing to manage the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and "breach of public trust."

Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., said the committee had "exhausted all other options to hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable" and that "Congress must exercise its constitutional duty and impeach him."

Democrats on the committee and DHS are calling the articles a "sham."

Ranking member Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., accused Republicans of abusing their impeachment power to "score political points."

"Republicans don't actually want to work towards bipartisan solutions to fix the border – in fact, they have repeatedly sabotaged the Secretary's efforts to secure the border and denied DHS' funding requests," Thompson said in a statement. "Secretary Mayorkas is upholding the law and honoring the public trust as he has throughout his more than 30 years of service to our Nation."

DHS responded Sunday with a memo that called Republicans' effort "a distraction from other vital national security priorities and the work Congress should be doing to actually fix our broken immigration laws."

"They don't want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it. That's why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary