Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas admitted Monday that his department was releasing “above 85%” of illegal immigrants caught at the border.
Mayorkas, the Biden administration’s top official on the issue, admitted the “above 85%” figure during a private meeting with Border Patrol agents, three of these agents confirmed to Fox News.
Republicans filed impeachment papers against Mayorkas just two days later.
Publicly, Mayorkas has been describing the release rate as closer to 70%. Asked for comment on the 70% figure, Mayorkas told Fox News earlier this month, “It would not surprise me at all. I know the data.”
At the time, Mayorkas described the number of catch-and-release illegal immigrants as “well over a million” annually.
After the 70% remark, Mayorkas faced some skepticism from Border Patrol agents, according to Fox News, and then he privately revised his estimate to 85%.
Migrants can legally approach the border, request asylum, and then wait in the U.S. for Homeland Security to process their claims. However, most of them become illegal immigrants by disappearing after being released.
“When somebody enters the country, we place them in immigration enforcement proceedings pursuant to immigration law, and if their claim for relief, their claim to remain in the United States succeeds, then by law they are able to stay here,” Mayorkas said on Special Report with Bret Baier earlier this month.
“When individuals are released, they are released into immigration enforcement proceedings. They are on alternatives to detention. And we have returned or removed a record number of individuals. We are enforcing the laws that Congress has passed.”
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for its “catch-and-release” police, and many are called for a return to the remain-in-Mexico policy.
Other Republicans are demanding a staff shakeup.
U.S. Rep. Mark Green launched impeachment proceedings Wednesday against Mayorkas. Green, a Tennessee Republican, chairs the Homeland Security Committee, and the panel seeks to prove dereliction of duty.
“The evidence documented throughout this report will demonstrate that Mayorkas has been, and continues to be, derelict in the solemn duty to secure the nation’s borders,” the panel’s initial report said.
Opening the hearing, Green said there is “no reasonable alternative but to pursue the possibility of impeachment.”
The House panel has been circling Mayorkas all year, at times expected to lurch ahead with impeachment proceedings against him as the border crossings hit record highs, topping 10,000 on some days. The number has only recently dipped.
During Wednesday’s nearly five-hour session, Republicans hammered away at Mayorkas’s performance, saying he’d failed to do his job detaining migrants who didn’t have the right to be in the country and allowed others to remain as they await proceedings.
“We’re going to impeach him,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La.
Speaker Mike Johnson gave nod to the proceedings and called Mayorkas the “leading perpetrator” of the border problems. “Congress is now going to have to take the next step and hold him accountable,” he said at a press conference.
However, impeaching a Cabinet secretary is rare, having only happened once before in the nation’s history when the House impeached Defense Secretary William Belknap in 1876 over kickbacks in government contracts. Going after an official for a policy dispute, in this instance over the claim that Mayorkas is not upholding immigration laws, is unprecedented.
“You cannot impeach a Cabinet secretary because you don’t like a president’s policies,” said the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
Other Democrats said the hearing was designed by Republicans to score political points instead of stopping illegal immigration. “Impeachment will not make our borders any safer,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill.
It remains to be seen whether the House investigation can convince lawmakers that Mayorkas’ conduct rises to the level of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the Constitution specifies for impeachment.
Unlike the House, the Senate is currently controlled 51-to-49 by the Democrats. A bipartisan group of senators has been engaged in almost daily negotiations with Mayorkas over a landmark border security package.
Late Monday, Green said what’s happening on the two sides of the Capitol are “separate,” adding negotiations between Mayorkas and the senators “will go on and hopefully they’ll come to an agreement.”
The Homeland Security Department released a memo noting that Mayorkas and the bipartisan senators are working hard to find “real solutions” to fix broken immigration laws while the House majority is wasting time on “baseless and pointless political attacks” by trying to impeach him.
Sen. James Lankford, the chief GOP negotiator of the border package, who has been in almost daily negotiations involving Mayorkas, said he understands his colleagues’ frustrations. But he encouraged them to focus forcing Biden’s hand instead.
“Mayorkas is gearing up President Biden’s policies — that’s what a secretary is going to do,” Lankford told reporters. “So you can swap secretaries, the policies are going to be exactly the same.”
As the House proceeds with its various impeachment probes, not all Republicans have been eager for the undertakings.
Eight Republicans voted in November to put off the final Mayorkas impeachment vote by sending it to committee.
Even if the House agrees to impeach Mayorkas, the case would go to trial in the Democrat-controlled Senate, where it takes a two-thirds majority to convict. But not an 85% majority.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.