US Senate ends impeachment of Biden’s border chief Mayorkas
WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) – The Democratic-majority U.S. Senate on Wednesday dismissed impeachment charges against President Joe Biden’s top border official, bringing a swift end to an effort that House of Representatives Republicans launched months ago.
In a series of partisan votes, the Senate dismissed the charges accusing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of not enforcing U.S. border laws and lying to Congress, as illegal immigration has hit record levels since Biden took office in 2021.
Biden’s Republican challenger in the Nov. 5 elections that will determine control of the White House and Congress, Donald Trump, has made the border a central focus of his campaign, and Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that immigration is a top concern among voters, and the top issue for Republicans.
Mayorkas denied wrongdoing, and the White House and congressional Democrats blasted the exercise as a misuse of the impeachment powers to highlight a policy dispute, rather than addressing the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“Once and for all, the Senate has rightly voted down this baseless impeachment that even conservative legal scholars said was unconstitutional,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement. He chastised House Republicans for staging “baseless political stunts while killing real bipartisan border security reforms.”
Trump earlier this year helped kill a bipartisan Senate deal that would have imposed tough new limits on immigration.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a joint statement with fellow top Republicans, said “every single Senate Democrat has issued their full endorsement of the Biden administration’s dangerous open border policies.”
