Republicans Move Forward With Mayorkas Impeachment Proceedings as They Attack Biden Over Border

House Republicans will formally move ahead with impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas when they return to work next week, as they seek to put immigration front and center in the lead-up to the November election. 

The move comes as Republicans escalate their protest efforts against Joe Biden, exploiting a surge of migrants at the southern border—and as the president’s campaign begins to more aggressively push back. “Actions speak louder than words,” White House Spokesman Andrew Bates said Wednesday, accusing Republicans of “hamstringing” the administration’s immigration reform efforts to exacerbate the crisis.

Biden has been “derelict in his duty,” shot back House Speaker Mike Johnson, who led a dozen House Republicans Wednesday on a border visit in Texas, whose governor has continued to ramp up his busing program, straining the resources of sanctuary cities like Denver, New York, and Chicago, the latter of which is set to host the Democratic National Convention in eight months.

The administration has yet to provide the relief those cities’ Democratic leaders have demanded to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. But it has taken a more direct line against Greg Abbott’s hardline immigration agenda: On Tuesday, the Justice Department filed an emergency motion to the Supreme Court that would allow Border Patrol agents to cut razor-wire Texas constructed along the border, and last week, the administration vowed to sue the state if it went ahead with the extreme deportation law Abbott signed in December.

But Abbott has remained defiant—“See you in court,” the governor wrote in response to the DOJ’s razor-wire filing—and Capitol Hill Republicans are continuing to make a crackdown at the border a sticking point in the effort to pass Biden’s supplemental spending package that would provide aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Meanwhile, Donald Trump—who has echoed Adolf Hitler in claiming that non-white immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America—has kept up his dehumanizing rhetoric, seeking to stoke the fears and animosities of his base. “There is an INVASION going on at our Southern Border!!!” Trump posted Tuesday.

The crisis is, of course, far more complicated than Trump and his allies insist—and the actions of Abbott and other hardline Republicans aren’t helping matters. But the Biden administration’s struggles to address the issue could leave Americans more open to the superficial, inhumane initiatives we’ve seen on the right. Indeed, a majority of voters in recent polls have suggested they prefer Trump’s approach to immigration policy over Biden’s—and the president’s vulnerability could grow, with border officials processing a record number of migrants in December and Abbott’s cruel stunt testing the resolve of sanctuary cities. “Without significant intervention from the federal government,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said last week, “this mission will not be sustained.”