WASHINGTON, Feb 7, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Joe Biden's immigration chief narrowly
escaped impeachment over the US border crisis Tuesday, in a party-line vote
dismissed by Democrats as a political stunt ahead of a presidential election
expected to feature immigration as a major issue.

The failed rebuke was led by hardline Republicans in the House of
Representatives who have been targeting Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas for months over a surge in illegal entries across the southern
border.

Republicans had been sweating on what was expected to be a close vote, and so
it proved -- as three members of the party sided with Democrats in a vote
that ended 216-214 in Mayorkas's favor.

Impeachment is the political equivalent of an indictment and Mayorkas would
have faced the prospect of a trial in the Senate, although he would have been
acquitted by the Democratic-led upper chamber and allowed to keep his job.

The House -- which had only impeached one other cabinet official in its
history, Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 -- took a single vote on
two articles accusing Mayorkas of failure to enforce the law and of lying to
Congress.

Republicans command a narrow majority in the lower chamber and two
conservatives jangled nerves in the leadership team as they announced their
opposition to the impeachment ahead of the vote. They were joined by a
surprise third dissenter as the vote played out, killing the impeachment
drive.

"The failure of the Biden administration to rein in an open border is a
national disgrace and will be a stain on his presidential legacy," Colorado's
Ken Buck, one of the Republican rebels, wrote in an op-ed for congressional
newspaper The Hill.

"However, the truth is that this is a policy disagreement masked as an
impeachment."

California's Tom McClintock, another dissenter, released a 10-page memo
accusing his party of failing to identify an impeachable "high crime or
misdemeanor."

- 'Political stunt' -

The impeachment resolution accused Mayorkas of "willful and systemic refusal
to comply with the law" on securing America's borders and charged him with
"breach of public trust."

"Impeaching a cabinet member without any evidence of high crimes or
misdemeanors? That is the breach of public trust here," said Minority Whip
Katherine Clark.

The vote came amid a showdown between the House and the Senate over curbing a
surge in illegal immigration that led to a record 10,000 apprehensions a day
at the border in December.

House Republicans have been accused of acting in bad faith over the Mayorkas
impeachment after coming out against a bipartisan Senate deal that would
impose the toughest asylum and border policies in decades.

The Republicans had initially pushed for the measures as a condition of
providing aid for Ukraine.

But a trickle of opposition to the bill turned into a major backlash as
former president Donald Trump, who is seeking reelection and sees immigration
as one of Biden's top vulnerabilities, warned his party to oppose it.

Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of pandering to Trump's
White House ambitions when they could be working to fix the "broken
immigration system."

"Instead, what you have to offer the American people is this sham
impeachment, this political stunt, this waste of time. But you will not fool
the American people," he said.

House Democrats voted in unison against the impeachment, which was also
vehemently opposed by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS).

"I think it is baseless. I think it's a political process, and I am not
engaged in politics," Mayorkas told The New York Times Magazine as part of a
media charm offensive ahead of the vote.

He railed against Republicans' "accusatory, rather than solution-focused"
politics in an interview in The Washington Post.