EXCLUSIVE: Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has violated his oath of office and must be impeached, according to a new report first seen by Fox News Digital.
The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., released the blistering assessment of Mayorkas’ tenure as Republican lawmakers introduce articles of impeachment for him and investigate his handling of the nation’s borders.
According to the report’s authors — Lora Ries, Steven Bradburh, and Hans von Spakovsky — such actions from Congress are exactly what should happen.
“By his policy decisions and misconduct as secretary of homeland security, [Mayorkas] has violated his oath of office, abused the powers of his office, and betrayed the trust of the American people,” the report states. “As a direct result of his actions, the U.S. has become gripped by an unprecedented border, national security, and illegal immigration catastrophe.”
“For these violations, abuses, depredations, and betrayals,” the paper continues, “Secretary Mayorkas deserves to be impeached, removed from office, and disqualified from holding any further office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”
It has been more than a century since a cabinet secretary has been impeached. However, Heritage argues that precedent should be broken because Mayorkas is, they claim:
- Deliberately defying and contravening the laws he’s charged with faithfully executing
- Abusing his power by, among other conduct, enticing illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. across the southern border
- Betraying the trust of the American people by lying to them and Congress about the border crisis.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had until now a cabinet official in charge of a major department come in and say I can waive requirements of the law and actually direct my personnel to violate laws they’re supposed to be enforcing,” von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital. “Mayorkas is responsible for some of the most outrageous conduct we’ve ever seen by a cabinet official. That kind of behavior warrants impeachment.”
The report shines a spotlight on the ongoing crisis at the nation’s southern border. Since Mayorkas took the helm at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who have crossed the southern border illegally. The figure reached a record 2.38 million illegal crossings encountered by U.S. authorities in fiscal year 2022 (which ended Sept. 30) and a record 251,487 just in December, the latest month for which data’s available, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. There has been over 200,000 such migrant encounters for 10 months straight.
“Mayorkas doesn’t think anyone should be denied entry,” said von Spakovsky. “He believes his job is to bring as many aliens into the country as he can, no matter what federal immigration law requires him to do.”
In May, Fox News host Bret Baier asked Mayorkas in an interview whether it was “the objective of the Biden administration to reduce, sharply reduce the total number of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border.”
Mayorkas responded, “It is the objective of the Biden administration to make sure that we have safe, orderly, and legal pathways for individuals to be able to access our legal system.”
The Heritage report details how Mayorkas has “violated” the law by directing DHS to “mass-parole” illegal immigrants into the U.S. when federal law says migrants seeking entry into the U.S. should be granted parole temporarily and “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
Mayorkas “refers to most migrants as asylum seekers, but he has the data and knows most people here aren’t genuine asylum seekers,” Ries told Fox News Digital. “He’s encouraging asylum fraud.”
Under U.S. law, in order to receive asylum, individuals leaving their own country are supposed to show past persecution or well-founded fear of future persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. However, the Heritage authors argue that, with the encouragement of Mayorkas’ words and policies, the system is being exploited by millions of economic migrants who may be fleeing hardship but do not meet the bar of asylum.
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