Republicans unveil impeachment articles against head of homeland security

Republicans published two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday, and plan to formally advance them on Tuesday towards a full House vote, despite two hearings failing to produce any evidence of his wrongdoing.

The politically charged move comes amid a raging battle in Washington DC over immigration, with a senior Democrat announcing Sunday that senators had reached a bipartisan agreement to tighten border security, even as Donald Trump took credit for likely sinking it.

The impeachment charges against Mayorkas allege, first, that he ignored laws passed by Congress and court orders, in order to pursue policies that led to a surge in illegal immigration; and second, that he breached the public trust by making false statements and obstructing oversight of the homeland security department.

“Congress has a duty to see that the executive branch implements and enforces the laws we have passed. Yet Secretary Mayorkas has repeatedly refused to do so,” Tennessee Republican congressman Mark Green, chair of the House homeland security committee, said in a statement.

A homeland security official responded by calling the charges “a sham” and a distraction from “other vital national security priorities”.

“This markup is just more of the same political games from House homeland security committee Republicans,” the official said in a statement.

“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 Mayorkas.”

Many Republicans have privately questioned the push to impeach Mayorkas, who