Homeland security secretary says he will cooperate with House Republicans’ impeachment proceedings – live | US immigration

Fox News reports that a group of rightwing House Republican lawmakers visiting Texas’s frontier with Mexico today are threatening to spark a government shutdown unless the border is “shut”:

House and Senate negotiators are currently trying to find agreement on long-term government funding measures, with a 19 January deadline before a partial shutdown of federal departments occurs. It’s unclear how significant the conservative lawmakers’ opposition will be to that effort, as it is likely whatever compromise emerges will pass with votes from both Democrats and Republicans.

Their statement nonetheless provoked a response from the White House, where spokesman Andrew Bates criticized the group for refusing to take up Joe Biden’s own proposals for more border security. “Today’s statements are just House Republicans’ latest admission that as President Biden and both parties in the Senate seek common ground to address the needs of the American people, their conference is instead choosing extreme politics that would subject American families to needless pain,” he said.

In an interview today with MSNBC, homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he would cooperate with the impeachment proceedings House Republicans will begin next week against him.

“I most certainly will, and I’m going to continue to do my work, as well,” Mayorkas said.

The secretary noted he had recently met with the Democratic and Republican senators who are trying to reach an agreement to change immigration policy in response to the increase in asylum seekers arriving from Mexico.

“I was on the Hill yesterday to provide technical advice in those ongoing negotiations. Before I headed to the Hill, I was in the office working on solutions. After my visit to the Hill, I was back in my office, working on solutions. That’s what we do in the Department of Homeland Security. That’s what this administration is focused on – solutions to problems,” Mayorkas said.

It’s unclear if the secretary will appear before the committee considering whether to impeach him, but he has frequently answered questions for House and Senate panels since taking the job in February 2021.

A Republican-controlled House committee will next week begin impeachment proceedings against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who the GOP blames for the surge in migrants crossing the southern border.

Republican homeland security committee chair Mark Green of Tennessee said in a statement the hearing would take place on Wednesday. In November, the House voted to refer articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the committee, which is investigating whether the secretary was derelict in his duties.

“For almost three years, the American people have demanded an end to the unprecedented crisis at the Southwest border, and they have also rightly called for Congress to hold accountable those responsible,” Green said. “That’s why the House Committee on Homeland Security led a comprehensive investigation into the causes, costs, and consequences of this crisis. Our investigation made clear that this crisis finds its foundation in Secretary Mayorkas’ decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability.”

Impeachments of cabinet secretaries are rare, and it is almost certain the Democratic-led Senate would reject convicting Mayorkas and removing him from office. House Republicans are also pursuing impeachment articles against Joe Biden over alleged corruption, though they have yet to publicize proof of their allegations.

With their visit to Texas’s border with Mexico today, House Republicans and their leader Mike Johnson are trying to draw attention to the large numbers of migrants making their way into the United States. But in a statement released this morning, White House spokesman Andrew Bates argues it is the GOP, not the Democrats, who are harming security at the US frontier.

“Right now, instead of joining the Biden Administration and members of both parties in the Senate to find common ground, Speaker Johnson is continuing to block President Biden’s proposed funding to hire thousands of new Border Patrol agents, hire more asylum officers and immigration judges, provide local communities hosting migrants additional grant funding, and invest in cutting edge technology that is critical to stopping deadly fentanyl from entering our country,” Bates said.

Biden in October proposed wide-ranging legislation to assist the militaries of Israel and Ukraine, as well as pay for more border security. In the months since, many House Republicans came out against further aid to Ukraine, while Johnson demanded budget cuts to the IRS tax authority in exchange for approving aid to Israel. The package’s fate now seems linked to Democrats agreeing to immigration policy changes intended to keep migrants out.

Bates argued that Biden has “proposed a comprehensive immigration reform plan and followed up by delivering record border security funding every single year of his term,” and attacked Republicans for not considering the legislation he proposed in October. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request,” he said.

On the campaign trail, the three leading contenders for the GOP’s presidential nomination have all pledged significant and draconian changes to US immigration policy if elected.

Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador who is polling at second place in recent surveys, pledged to “close the border”, send special forces to Mexico to fight cartels, and reinstitute a policy to force asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their applications are processed, which had been in effect during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has embraced similar policies, while also calling to end the automatic granting of citizenship to people born in the United States and authorize the summary execution of drug dealers crossing from Mexico, which is illegal:

Some of the most alarming rhetoric has come from Trump, the frontrunner for the nomination, who said last month that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”. As president, he instituted policies to separate migrant children from their parents, which many consider a human rights abuse. His latest comment drew widespread condemnation – including from Haley, who called it “harmful and unnecessary,” according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

The GOP has made keeping immigrants out of the United States a key plank of their platform, and today, around 60 House Republicans, including speaker Mike Johnson, will visit the border in Texas to make the case for a crackdown. Such trips have become routine for Republican lawmakers throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, and for the party’s presidential contenders, who have been selling voters on various ways to bar asylum seekers and others from the country, but today’s trip comes at a significant moment. The GOP has made passing stricter rules to curb the large numbers of migrants crossing into the country from Mexico its price to support military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, though the latter faces far more opposition on the right than the former.

Immigration policy is a famously difficult issue to find agreement on in Washington, but a small bipartisan group of senators has been negotiating for weeks to try to find a deal that will be acceptable to both parties. We’ll see if there’s any news about that today, while we also expect to hear from Johnson at 3.30pm eastern time, when he is scheduled to hold a press conference.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• Tom Emmer, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, endorsed Donald Trump for president, a day after his superior Steve Scalise did the same.

• With less than two weeks remaining before the Iowa Republican caucuses, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said she raised $24m in the fourth quarter of 2023, more than double her previous quarterly record. Some polls have lately shown her in a distant second-place to Trump.

• Karine Jean-Pierre will hold the first White House press briefing of the year at 2pm, alongside national security council spokesman John Kirby.