As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy prepares for Republicans to retake control of the House of Representatives, he declared on Tuesday his decision that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas should either resign or endure possible impeachment.
This is the right course of action.
“Our country may never recover from Secretary Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty. This is why today I am calling on the Secretary to resign. He cannot and must not remain in that position,” McCarthy said in El Paso, Texas. “If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action, and every failure. We’ll determine whether we can begin an impeachment inquiry.”
With more than two million interactions on the southern border in 2022, it's evident that Mayorkas has not done his duty to safeguard not just border communities but also the country in general.
Although some migrants arrive with valid asylum claims hoping to live a better life in the United States, the real problem lies in drug trafficking and the other hazardous methods that cartels and coyotes use to make money from people's pain and despair. There is no reason to forget events such as the deaths of 53 migrants in a tractor-trailer accident in Texas in June or the fact that fentanyl has been flowing in from Mexico, killing Americans in alarming numbers.
Tragedies like this can't be tolerated, even if they're due to poor policies that were wrongly implemented to show compassion. Republicans are aware that Mayorkas is not likely to resign, and therefore, they'll need to launch a thorough investigation on what's causing the border to be in such chaos. McCarthy even informed Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin that he'll hold a hearing at the border to help his Democratic colleagues comprehend the severity and urgency of this situation.
In the context of impeachment, the Senate Democratic majority wouldn't give Republicans the vote needed to remove Mayorkas from office.
Accountability is among the two most important actions Republicans should take to control the situation at the southern border.
President Joe Biden should have already demanded that Mayorkas step down, given that this scandal has cast a negative light on his administration. It’s not certain that Biden would pick someone more suitable to succeed Mayorkas, but it would be an intelligent political decision to remove the department's mascot. They've already tried to do this with the firing of Chris Magnus, the Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, but that wasn’t enough.
Republicans and Democrats in border states realize that border security is an essential issue, but Biden's administration has remained indifferent. The border-security crisis has gone on for a long time, and Americans are sick of it. McCarthy, along with other Republicans, must maintain the urgency of the border situation when the next session of Congress begins, because the fire of politics will only burn for a season.
