Back in 2021, Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs first introduced articles of impeachment seeking to remove Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from office. He accused Mayorkas of being “engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with his duties as an Officer of the United States.” Taking one look at the southern border back then, it would be hard for a reasonable person to argue the point. But the Democrats were still in control of the House then, so the motion was never taken up.

That was then, but this is now. The Biden border crisis has spiraled vastly and the impeachment articles needed to be updated to reflect that tragic reality. With the new GOP majority in charge, Biggs has brought his proposal forward, this time adding a new charge to the list. The most recent articles include a charge against Mayorkas for failing to uphold his oath of office. He is accused of overseeing “a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement.” (Fox News)

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., is introducing a new impeachment article against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, accusing him of violaring his oath of office and failing to enforce U.S. immigration law…

“Secretary Mayorkas has failed to faithfully uphold his oath and has instead presided over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement, at the expense of the Constitution and the security of the United States. Secretary Mayorkas has violated, and continues to violate, this oath by failing to maintain operational control of the border and releasing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the interior of the United States.”

The new articles also accuse Mayorkas of failing to implement the 2006 Secure Fence Act. That law tasks Homeland Security with the responsibility to “achieve and maintain operational control” over the border. The law could be seen as problematic because the phrase “operational control” is open to considerable interpretation. One could foresee Mayorkas pointing out that the official border crossings are still operating in a normal fashion with documents being checked and suspicious vehicles being inspected. He might then attempt to claim that it’s physically impossible to stop all illegal crossings in other areas, and the current period “just happens to be” worse than other times in the past.

Of course, it would take some major cojones for Alejandro Mayorkas to deliver that line with a straight face. I agree that it will likely never be possible to stop 100% of illegal traffic across the border. If we impeached the DHS secretary every time a single person popped out of an illegal tunnel or walked across one of the more desolate stretches of the border, nobody would hold the office for longer than ten minutes.

But there has to be a point where the failure is too obvious to ignore any longer. And I would argue that we reached that point quite a while ago. When we’re talking about more than a quarter million people crossing the border in a single month (as we’re seeing today), the Department of Homeland Security has clearly and obviously failed to secure the homeland. Impeachment is appropriate under such conditions.

Of course, the person most responsible for this disaster deserves to be impeached as well. That would be Joe Biden. This border crisis didn’t happen by accident and take everyone by surprise. On his first day in office, Biden ordered a halt to construction on the border wall and to almost all deportations. Children immediately began showing up at the border wearing their “Biden Please Let Us In” t-shirts. The coyotes began taking travel reservations and the cartels upped their purchases of fentanyl and other drugs. The border was open for illegal business and business was booming.

Someone should certainly be held accountable for all of this. But will they ever be? Even if articles of impeachment are passed in the House (which is far from a certainty), we would still need a conviction in the Senate. Is there one Democrat in the upper chamber that would vote to convict either Mayorkas or Biden, to say nothing of enough of them to reach the required 2/3 margin? Sadly, I wouldn’t bet on it. So we’re likely facing two more years of the same ongoing crisis, and it might be even longer than that if the GOP can’t rally an actual red wave in the 2024 Senate races.