In Letter, Sens. Cruz, Graham Raise Prospect of Impeachment for DHS Secretary Mayorkas

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas calling out his failure to enforce immigration law and address the drug and human trafficking crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border as “a gross dereliction of duty and a violation of your oath of office.” They note, “This is gross dereliction of duty and, if not corrected swiftly, could provide grounds for impeachment.”

The senators wrote:

“Your failure to faithfully enforce this nation’s immigration laws and willful blindness to the very real humanitarian crisis at our southern border amounts to a gross dereliction of duty and a violation of your oath of office. Historically high levels of illegal immigration and illicit drug trafficking demonstrate that our southern border is open for every kind of public health and national security threat imaginable. Despite the heroic efforts by the men and women of Border Patrol, who operate with very little support from Washington, D.C., you have failed to achieve any semblance of operational control of the southern border. We have grave concerns about what this failure means for both national security and the health and safety of American citizens. These failures cannot go unaddressed, and your actions cannot be unaccounted for. The American people deserve better.”

…

“Far from taking steps to address this crisis and secure the southern border, you have allowed the situation to worsen and pursued policies that have greatly exacerbated the problem while continuing to insist that ‘the border is secure.’ This is gross dereliction of duty and, if not corrected swiftly, could provide grounds for impeachment.”

The senators note the shocking statistics that are occurring under Secretary Mayorkas:

•  2,150,639 illegal alien encounters by CBP on the southern border in fiscal year 2022, the most ever in a single year.
• 1,734,686 encounters in fiscal year 2021, the second-most ever in a single year.
• 241,166 encounters in May 2022 alone, the most ever encounters in a single month.
• 235,706 encounters in April 2022 alone, the second-most ever encounters in a single month.
• 12,861 pounds of fentanyl seized by CBP in fiscal year 2022, a 219% increase over the same point in fiscal year 2020.
• 2,287 pounds seized just last month, enough to kill over 500 million people.
• 5,133 pounds seized in just the last three months, more than was seized in all of fiscal year 2020 and more than twice as much as in all of fiscal year 2019.

Read the full letter here.

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