8:48 pm ET, February 13, 2024
How the border issue spurred swing-district Republicans to back the mayor's impeachment effort
From CNN staff
House Republicans on Tuesday won a bid to fire Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who have been investigating his handling of the border since regaining the House majority in 2022.
The momentum to plan a swift indictment of Mayorgas picked up steam Last month Key swing-district Republicans expressed openness to the idea A recent surge of settlers on the southern border.
Border officials encountered more than 225,000 migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in December, the highest monthly total on record since 2000, according to Homeland Security figures shared with CNN. And in fiscal year 2022, according to the Department of Homeland Security, 1.4 million people visited cleared at the border, which is more than the previous year.
There is a crisis at the border Inspired RepublicansA handful of eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to defeat the November 2023 impeachment effort to unify their party for more aggressive action on the central issue of the 2024 campaign recently signaled they support impeachment if it passes. Group process, this It happened at the end of last month.
Moderate Republicans, including those in districts carried by President Joe Biden in 2020, have signaled a greater willingness to impeach the mayor than the president — a sign that the political landscape on the issue is shifting.
As House Republicans tried to use Mayorgas' dismissal to address their issues with Biden's handling of the border, the GOP Helped the tank – With Donald Trump – A A major bilateral border agreement and foreign aid package That would mean a difficult overhaul of immigration law for one of the Senate's most conservative members. House Speaker Mike Johnson said even if the bill clears the Senate, it will die in his chamber.
Mayorgas wrote in a letter ahead of the vote that “the problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new” and called on Congress to provide a legislative solution to a “historically divisive issue.”
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