House Republican impeachment managers are set to send the Senate articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday after Senate conservatives successfully lobbied Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to delay the delivery of the charges.
The transfer of the articles will officially force the Senate to take up the matter of impeachment against Mayorkas, which has been pending Since the House approved the punishment in a 214-213 vote in February. Senators are expected to be sworn in as jurors Wednesday, with Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-Wash.) presiding over the chamber.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), however, is still expected to quickly dismiss the charges, moving to table or dismiss the articles.
“We’re ready to go whenever they are. We are sticking with our plan. We’re going to move this as expeditiously as possible,” Schumer said last week.
Johnson signed the articles Monday afternoon.
Tuesday’s delivery comes after Johnson agreed to delay the transmission at the urging of Senate conservatives, moving it from last Wednesday to Tuesday. Those Republicans said they did not want to rush the process — the proceedings would have begun Thursday, with lawmakers slated to leave Washington that afternoon.
The new timeline, however, comes as the Senate is racing the clock to pass legislation that would reauthorize the U.S.’s warrantless surveillance authority, formally known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The House passed legislation last week ahead of Friday’s deadline.
The impeachment resolution accuses Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” as well as “breach of public trust.”
House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) are among the impeachment managers, as is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), who repeatedly pushed to force a vote on Mayorkas’s impeachment.
It’s an unusual approach to impeachment, which requires demonstrating that an official committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
Immigration law experts have said Mayorkas has not violated any statute in carrying out the Biden administration’s immigration policies, and conservative scholars like Jonathan Turley have accused the House of trying to boot the secretary over policy differences.
A number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been critical of the move, even as some Republicans pushed Johnson to delay transmitting the articles, hoping to force the Senate to give greater consideration to the matter.
“Since 1797, twenty-one individuals have been impeached by the House of Representatives. Trials were held in every single instance, except once when an impeached judge resigned from office before trial commenced,” 43 senators wrote in a letter to Schumer urging him to hold a full impeachment trial for Mayorkas.
But six GOP senators did not sign the letter, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who have been critical of the effort.
Congress has not impeached a member of the cabinet since the 1870s, when the secretary of War was accused of taking kickbacks.
This story was updated at 4:34 p.m.