It only took a handful of hours for the US Senate to rule the lawsuit against Alejandro Mayorkas unfounded. Joe Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security thus escaped, on Wednesday April 17, impeachment proceedings launched against him in mid-February by the Republicans.
The latter accuse the minister responsible in particular for immigration of having transformed the border between the United States and Mexico into a sieve, and had consequently indicted him in the House of Representatives where they are in the majority.
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 the Democrats, in the majority, voting en bloc to oppose the dismissal of Mr. Mayorkas.
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. The current president's camp accuses the Republicans of making the minister a scapegoat less than seven months before the presidential election.
Headache for Joe Biden
The Constitution provides that Congress can impeach the president, a minister, or federal judges for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The last indictment of a minister by Congress dates back to 1876. Secretary of War William Belknap, accused of corruption, resigned before the end of the impeachment procedure.
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.
