Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has agreed to schedule an appearance at his impeachment hearing.
A DHS official sent a letter to arrange possible dates for Mayorkas to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday to its chairman, Rep. Mark Green (R-TN). According to the letter, Mayorkas cannot attend the next impeachment hearing on Jan. 18 due to meetings with Mexican officials but is working with a bipartisan group of senators “in a good-faith effort to break the gridlock.”
“Yet again, this Secretary is putting the interests of Mexico ahead of the American people,” Green posted in response to the letter on X. “Apparently, he needs to be reminded that Congress is a co-equal branch of government, and our Committee, not Mexico, has oversight over his department.”
Wednesday was the first day of impeachment hearings against Mayorkas, which the secretary did not attend.
“It is deeply troubling that Secretary Mayorkas has refused the Committee’s multiple requests to appear before a co-equal branch of government,” Green wrote in a statement Thursday. “For months, we have tried to work with his office to secure his testimony before the Committee so the American people can receive some much-needed transparency about the causes, costs, and consequences of the unprecedented border crisis. We have given him every opportunity to explain his handling of the crisis.”
“Unfortunately, this pattern of defying Congress has continued with his refusal to testify before this Committee specifically about his handling of this crisis and his failure to enforce America’s immigration laws. Apparently, accountability and transparency are not high on his priority list. The American people deserve better than this,” the statement said.
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Last year, a bill successfully passed the House to reduce Mayorkas’s salary over his job performance amid an influx of immigrants at the southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection processed more than 302,000 people at the U.S.-Mexico border in December alone. This is in addition to the over 10 million immigrants who have reportedly entered the country illegally since Biden took office. It is the most recorded in that amount of time of any administration.