U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press conference at a U.S. Border Patrol station on January 08, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas.
John Moore | Getty Images
House Republicans are preparing to take another stab at impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a week after the same effort failed in an embarrassment for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
This time around, Republicans are confident they will have the majority vote to impeach now that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., has returned to Washington after cancer treatment, which prevented him from breaking last week’s 215-215 tie.
“There’s always concerns, but no, it will pass,” Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., said Tuesday. “All the Republicans will be back and it’ll pass.”
That optimism still hinges on a razor-thin House Republican majority, threatened by a northeast snowstorm that could impede lawmakers’ travel to Capitol Hill. If all GOP House members do show up to the floor Tuesday evening for voting, Republicans can only afford to lose three votes.
During last Tuesday’s vote, Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California, crossed party lines to help Democrats sink the impeachment effort.
Gallagher and Buck still plan to vote no on Tuesday, spokespeople from their offices told CNBC. McClintock did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his current stance.
Days after he helped tank the impeachment, Gallagher announced that he would not seek reelection for a fifth House term, leaving his seat up for grabs in a key swing state.
Tuesday’s impeachment re-vote is scheduled to take place hours before polls close in a New York special election to fill ex-Rep. George Santos‘ seat, which would further squeeze the House Republican majority if Democratic candidate Tom Suozzi prevails.
If Republicans eke out a majority vote against Mayorkas, he would become only the second cabinet member in U.S. history to be impeached.
Republican hard-liners proposed articles of impeachment against Mayorkas last May. Led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the articles claimed that Mayorkas intentionally neglected his responsibility to protect the U.S. southern border, which has seen record numbers of migrant crossings in recent months.
Mayorkas has argued that chaos at the border is not his fault but rather a symptom of the country’s decades-long broken immigration system.
“We don’t bear responsibility for a broken system,” Mayorkas said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The White House has supported Mayorkas, condemning the impeachment effort as a political distraction by Republicans, who refused $20 billion of border security funding in a bipartisan Senate deal last week.
“They should drop this,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated Tuesday. “There’s a bipartisan agreement that came out of the national security supplemental. They should focus on that instead of doing another political stunt.”