The announcement comes at a time when nearly 10,000 migrants cross the U.S. border from Mexico each day, and the issue is politically heated in the months before November's presidential election.
Republicans are calling the situation a humanitarian disaster and blaming the Homeland Security Secretary for causing it.
“Our investigation clearly shows that this crisis stems from the Secretary's decision-making and his refusal to enforce laws passed by Congress,” Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement. House of Representatives.
“His failure to uphold his pledge calls for accountability,” he added. The first hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, January 10.
“Since President Biden has been in office, the government has done almost nothing to secure the border,” said Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House.
“But we saw it with our own eyes, they opened the border to the whole world,” he said during a press conference in Texas, in front of the Rio Grande River that defines the border with Mexico.
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Negotiations
In response to these criticisms, the Department of Homeland Security accused Republicans of “wasting precious time and taxpayer money” on “political maneuvering.”
For Alejandro Mayorkas to be removed from office, a majority of lawmakers in the House of Representatives must first vote on his impeachment before the Senate, which must find a two-thirds majority to complete the process.
A practically impossible situation as Republicans hold only a slim majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate has a Democratic majority.
The initiation of this criminal procedure remains a thorn in Joe Biden's side, while authorities have recorded 302,000 arrests of immigrants who entered the United States illegally.
The White House and members of Congress from both camps have been negotiating immigration reform, with Republicans making tougher immigration measures conditional on their support for a new aid package for Ukraine.
From the border, for example, Mike Johnson asked Joe Biden to restore a rule used by the Trump administration that allows asylum seekers to be denied entry until they can be heard by a judge.
The Democratic mayors of New York, Denver and Chicago — major cities that have seen busloads of migrants sent by Texas' Republican governor — pressed the Democratic president to act quickly.
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