After House Fails To Impeach Mayorkas, GOP Plans To Try Again Next Week

After a vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas failed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday, GOP leadership is planning to try again next week.

The vote on the floor was 214-216. Democrats moved in lockstep and even had an unexpected vote when Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was rushed in from the hospital where he was recovering from intestinal surgery to cast his vote in scrubs.

Three Republicans defected, and with Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) unavailable due to currently undergoing cancer treatment, that was enough to defeat the already-slim Republican majority in the House.

The three Republicans who voted no were Reps. Tom McClintock (R-California), Ken Buck (R-Colorado) and Mike Gallager (R-Wisconsin). While all three representatives voiced their disagreement with Biden’s border policy and the implementation of current immigration laws, they conceded that Mayorkas had committed no impeachable acts.

Buck went as far as to call the proceedings “a partisan impeachment, not based on what the constitution actually states” in an op-ed he wrote for The Hill.

Mayorkas has said that it is not the Biden Administration’s policies that have drawn the increased number of migrants to the southern border, but current poor conditions around the world, including wars, extreme poverty and climate disasters, that have inspired people to seek a better life in America.

Mayorkas has tried to deal with the increasing pressure for a stronger border by placing heavier restrictions on the qualifications for asylum and instituting aggressive deportation policies. But the administration continues to insist that they are working within the parameters of a wildly underfunded and outdated immigration system. Systems that a bipartisan immigration bill, recently voted down by Senate Republicans, was attempting to address.

Republicans have made it clear that next they will try again.

Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), one of the Republican no votes, switched his vote at the last minute in a procedural move that will allow the House to vote on the impeachment again. They have timed the vote for sometime next week after the return of Scalise, and before the special election for former Rep. George Santos‘ seat in New York, an election that could go to a Democrat.

After the vote, Rep. Mark Green (R-Tennessee), the chair of the Homeland Security committee who introduced the articles of impeachment, said he “was frustrated” by the failed vote but insisted, “We’ll see it back again.”