Texas’ Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday that impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas would help unify House GOP members.
“I think that would unify Republicans in the House, to impeach Mayorkas, but I think it would also highlight the incredible human suffering that the Biden administration's open borders are causing,” Cruz said during the “Julie Mason Show” on SiriusXM Wednesday. “I think that would be, that they should have done that already.”
With House GOP members appearing to be in disarray following the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy Tuesday, Cruz said that going back to work and impeaching Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland would restore focus and concentrate on important issues.
“I think the House should move forward with impeachment proceedings for Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, I believe, has been the most partisan and political attorney general we've ever had,” Cruz said. “That there are two senior career IRS employees who were whistleblowers who have come forward and alleged that Merrick Garland lied to Congress under oath, actually lied in response to questioning from me in the Senate Judiciary Committee ... and also that he engaged in obstruction of justice, blocking the investigation into Hunter Biden, and more significantly blocking investigation into Joe Biden's involvement in his son's corruption.”
Impeachment efforts in the House against Mayorkas have been losing steam over the summer, even as the number of illegal border crossings continues to be more than 200,000 each month.
“The only time you use impeachment is if someone has done something that rises to impeachment,” then Speaker McCarthy told POLITICO in August, noting that committees are still investigating Mayorkas.
Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told POLITICO at the time that members need to look at Mayorkas' job performance instead of just “high crimes and misdemeanors” when considering his removal.
“Some of my colleagues get hung up on high crimes and misdemeanors in a way that they don’t want to take that step with respect to Mayorkas. I disagree,” Roy said in the report. “We have what — a majority of three, or four or five depending on the day and people’s health? So, if there’s a handful of people that don’t cross the line, that’s where we are.”
President Joe Biden’s administration announced Wednesday that it is “waiving” 26 laws to build additional border barriers, a direct contradiction of the president’s 2020 campaign promise to not build “one more inch” of a wall on the border, CNN reported.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Mayorkas said in the federal notice Wednesday.