(Washington) US Immigration Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas escaped impeachment proceedings launched against him by Republicans on Wednesday, who accuse him of provoking a crisis on the border between the United States and Mexico.
It only took a handful of hours for the Senate, with a Democratic majority, to judge the lawsuit against the American official to be unfounded.
In the middle of an election year, immigration has emerged as one of the key issues in the campaign pitting Democratic President Joe Biden against former Republican leader Donald Trump.
Conservatives accuse Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of turning the US southern border into a sieve.
For this reason, they launched impeachment proceedings against him.
In mid-February, the 64-year-old secretary was indicted in the House of Representatives, where the conservatives are in the majority.
1876
As required by the Constitution, the Senate, the other chamber of the US Congress, began the trial of the US official on Wednesday.
The procedure formally began at the beginning of the afternoon, but was swept away immediately, with Democrats voting en bloc to oppose the dismissal of Mr. Mayorkas.
Biden’s camp accuses Republicans of making the secretary a scapegoat less than seven months before the presidential election.
The last indictment of a secretary by Congress dates back to… 1876. Secretary of War William Belknap, accused of corruption, resigned before the end of the impeachment procedure.
The Constitution provides that Congress can impeach the president, a secretary, or federal judges for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“Wasting precious time”
The main person concerned, Alejandro Mayorkas, has repeatedly rejected the Republicans’ accusations, accusing them of “wasting precious time and taxpayers’ money” with this impeachment procedure.
The situation nonetheless remains a headache for Joe Biden.
Republicans, most of them close to former President Donald Trump with his very anti-immigration rhetoric, accuse the Democratic president of having allowed the country to be “invaded”, taking as an example the record number of migrants arrested at the border , 302,000 in December.
Donald Trump regularly refers to particularly shocking murders, committed by people who entered the United States illegally, to emphasize that there is a wave of crime due to illegal migrants.
But neither the police statistics available in major American cities, nor the studies carried out by experts, show the reality of such a phenomenon.