The National Security Committee of the House of Representatives has approved a resolution to impeach Mayorcas.

(CNN) — The US Republicans in the House of Representatives voted early Wednesday to advance articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, moving closer to the rare step of removing a Cabinet official.

The measure provides for a vote on the articles by the full House of Representatives, although a date for that vote has not yet been set.

The House Homeland Security Committee considered its resolution that Mayorkas committed serious crimes and misdemeanors in his management of the southern border, although many constitutional experts said the evidence did not meet that high standard.

The controversial move would make Mayorkas the first cabinet secretary to be impeached in nearly 150 years.

The impeachment effort comes as House Republicans face growing pressure from their base to hold the Biden administration accountable on a key campaign issue: the border.

The articles of impeachment were approved along party lines by the House Homeland Security Committee. Republicans and Democrats on the panel debated the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas for about 15 hours until Republicans ended the debate by preventing Democrats from introducing further amendments.

While Republicans have been investigating Mallorca’s border handling since they won a majority in the House, their impeachment inquiry has moved quickly in the new year. House Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed to quickly bring articles of impeachment against Mallorca to the floor and has signaled he will reject a bipartisan deal being negotiated in the Senate that would address border policies.

Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security

While senior House Republicans are confident they have the support to remove the secretary of Homeland Security, they could lose by just two votes given their slim majority. Republicans are planning a review to take the temperature of the conference this week, a Republican source told CNN.

House Republican Leader Tom Emmer told CNN before the markup that he was counting the votes, but added: “We’re going to approve it. I mean, what he did is pretty outrageous.”

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee is meeting with some of the remaining Republican holdouts, such as Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, and has issued several memos about Mallorcas in recent weeks, according to Republican Party sources. Green made his case to senior Republicans during a closed-door meeting Monday night and later told CNN that “there is no question or disagreement.”

In a sign of the growing momentum for the effort, Republican swing district Rep. Don Bacon said he would vote to recall Mayorkas. But Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, another moderate House Republican lawmaker, was less critical.

“I want to hear all the arguments in favor. I understand there’s a lot of support and I want to fully understand that,” Newhouse said.

Before the marking, Green explained why Mallorca should be charged.

“These articles present a clear, compelling and irrefutable case for the impeachment of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas,” Green said in a statement to CNN. “He has deliberately and systematically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress. “He has violated the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people and by obstructing congressional oversight of his department.”

Green argued that Mayorkas’ “deliberate and methodical refusal to obey the law” and “abuse of the public trust” amounted to impeachable felonies and misdemeanors. Green claimed that Mayorkas “willfully exceeded” his parole authority, “refused to comply” with detention orders and lied about DHS having “operational control” of the border. He quoted Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito as saying that in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling that states cannot challenge federal immigration laws, Congress can “use weapons of interbranch warfare,” including impeachment.

But various jurists have poured cold water on the legal arguments that Republicans are using to support their impeachment effort.

Ross Garber, a Tulane law professor who has represented many Republican officials as prosecutors and defenses in impeachment cases, told CNN that House Republicans have not presented evidence of impeachable crimes.

“I think what House Republicans are saying is that Secretary Mayorkas is guilty of mismanagement,” Garber said. “At least as currently framed, the charges do not rise to the level of a felony or a misdemeanor.”

Republican President George W. Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who served under Bush, wrote in a recent op-ed: “As a former federal judge, federal prosecutor and deputy attorney general, I can say with confidence that, despite all the investigations by the House National Security Committee, They have not presented evidence of meeting the requirements.

Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley, who has been called by Republicans to serve as a witness at the hearing, said: “It is corrupt that there is no current evidence that he committed an impeachable crime,” and 25 law professors wrote in an open letter. That Mayorkas’ challenge would be “grossly unreasonable from the point of view of constitutional law.”

Despite outside voices, a growing number of House Republicans, including House GOP leaders, support impeachment of Mayorcas.

Even if Mayorcas were to be impeached, it is unlikely that he would be impeached in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Mayorkas sent a letter to Green before Tuesday’s marking, detailing how he began his career in public service and defending his record.

“My respect for law enforcement was instilled in me by my parents, who brought me to this country to escape the communist takeover of Cuba and the freedoms and opportunities our democracy afforded me,” Mayorkas said.

Mayorkas wrote that “the problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new” and called on Congress to help provide a legislative solution to a “historically divisive issue.” He has praised the bipartisan group of senators he has worked with for their willingness to put aside their differences to try to find solutions on the border.

The Department of Homeland Security also criticized House Republicans for the commission’s upcoming vote, calling it a “farce” and a “distraction from other important national security priorities.”

In a memo, DHS criticized the impeachment inquiry, arguing that there were no high crimes or misdemeanors, that the investigation was “premeditated from the start” and that the process is “cunning and hypocritical.”

In response to Republicans blaming Mayorkas for increasing border crossings, the DHS memo stated: “This administration has deported, turned away or expelled more migrants in three years than the previous administration in four years.”

Addressing claims that Mayorcas failed to maintain operational control of the border, DHS said that, as the law defines operational control, “no administration has ever had operational control.”

Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee have repeatedly criticized their Republican colleagues for their efforts to remove Mayorkas. Before Tuesday’s markup, Democrats released a report calling the GOP effort “a sham.”

“What is glaringly missing from these articles is any real accusation or even a shred of evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors — the constitutional standard for impeachment,” he said in a statement responding to Mayorkas’ articles of impeachment.

Expedited impeachment inquiry process

Pressure to plan a speedy impeachment trial against the secretary gained momentum this month as key Republicans in swing districts expressed renewed openness to the idea amid a recent surge in migrant crossings at the southern border.

The focus on Mallorca is a shift for the House GOP, which has set its sights on a possible impeachment of President Joe Biden as early as 2024. But with the Biden investigation proceeding methodically and many Republicans still skeptical of impeaching the president, senior Republicans now point to Mallorcas as an easy solution as the border crisis becomes a crucial campaign issue.

Barbed wire fence and sign along the Rio Grande River on the US-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas on September 22, 2023.

Instead of formally opening an impeachment inquiry with a vote in the House of Representatives, the unilateral effort has been conducted by the Homeland Security Committee, rather than the House Judiciary Committee, where impeachment typically originates. Articles of impeachment, however, are not constitutional. requirement

“When committee chairs don’t vote in regular order, that’s an invalidity of the institution,” House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina, said of how the process unfolded. Impeachment of Mayorcas.

In the investigative phase, Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee held 10 hearings, released five interim reports and conducted 11 transcript interviews with current and former Border Patrol agents. But since the investigation began, the GOP-led panel has held just two hearings and decided to proceed with the articles of impeachment without giving the secretary a chance to testify.

Republicans had invited Mayorkas to testify at the impeachment hearing on January 18, but the DHS secretary said he would host members of the Mexican cabinet to discuss border enforcement and asked to work with the commission to schedule a different date, according to a report. Retrieved from CNN.

Green said his commission has given Mayorkas “opportunity after opportunity to appear,” but Mayorkas wrote that he has testified before Congress more than any other Biden cabinet official, noting that seven of those times Green was before the commission. .

“Whatever process I initiate, no matter how meritless, my ability to respond to surveillance requests will not waver,” Mayorkas said.

CNN’s Melanie Zanona and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.