This week, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody urged Congress to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas following a federal judge ruling against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Biden administration’s immigration policies in a case brought by Florida.
“Over the past two years, the situation at the border is only getting worse because of Mayorkas’s actions. Attorney General Moody is urging congressional leaders to initiate impeachment proceedings to remove Mayorkas from his post,” Moody’s office noted.
“As a federal court ruled in our case, Biden and Mayorkas have turned the U.S. Southwest Border into nothing more than a ‘speedbump.’ The court highlighted several other abject failures by DHS, led by Mayorkas. If he is unwilling to do the patriotic thing and resign his position, then Congress must initiate impeachment proceedings to get rid of this threat to our national security,” said Moody.
In a letter to congressional leaders, Moody outlined the ongoing border crisis and the successful Florida suit against DHS over its unlawful policies that significantly reduced enforcement capabilities and let thousands of inadmissible immigrants into the interior.
The letter stated: “…A federal judge recently found that: ‘… the evidence establishes that Defendants [including Secretary Mayorkas] have effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand’ and that Secretary Mayorkas’s ‘actions were akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border.’ Secretary Mayorkas’s actions…have had the effect of nearly breaking our nation’s immigration system as nearly 2.5 million illegal immigrants have been released or got away from the Southwest Border…I am imploring you to commence impeachment proceedings immediately against him for lying to Congress and the American people repeatedly, violating his oath of office and abusing his authority. His continuation in his current role is a clear and present threat to the United States.”
“Due to Sec. Mayorkas’s unlawful policies, that are proven to incentivize large groups of inadmissible immigrants to attempt to enter the country, there have been more than 4.5 million immigrant encounters at the Southwest Border since Biden took office. The Biden administration has released more than 1.3 million immigrants into the interior. Additionally, CBP estimates that at least 1.2 million evaded authorities and escaped into the interior,” Moody’s office noted. “Since Feb. 2021, CBP officials seized more than 31,000 pounds of fentanyl at the Southwest Border. That is enough to kill the entire U.S. population nearly 22 times over. In Fiscal Year 2022, CBP apprehended 98 individuals from the terrorist watchlist, a 553 percent increase from the previous year. There’s been 69 such encounters since October 2022 alone.”
Moody offered her reasons for impeaching Mayorkas in the letter.
“Secretary Mayorkas also directed and oversaw policies that have created a border, national security, and humanitarian disaster that he knows, or should know, put the American public in danger…Secretary Mayorkas has handed the keys to our border to organizations that should be designated foreign terrorist organizations. These organizations are not only flooding our country with deadly fentanyl, they are also raping, abusing, and exploiting the immigrants they smuggle across the border. Many of these victims are children. As the situation at the border has made our country less safe, Secretary Mayorkas has substantially reduced immigration detention capacity. At the same time, he has the nerve to send DHS attorneys into court to argue that DHS lacks the resources to comply with the law. As the Court put it in Florida v. United States, ‘like a child who kills his parents and then seeks pity for being an orphan, it is hard to take Defendants’ claim that they had to release more aliens into the country because of limited detention capacity seriously..” Moody write.
During the course of discovery and litigation in the case Moody referenced, Florida forced the federal government to provide or disclose the following:
A deposition of U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz showing the Biden administration purposely reduced detention capacity of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and narrowed removal pathways. Ortiz claimed these changes left Border Patrol with no other choice but to release hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the interior. Ortiz also agreed that Biden’s policies caused the unprecedented surge at the border;
A memo outlining the federal government’s plan in the event immigrants overrun the border if Title 42 expires—the mass-release of migrants into the United States;
Testimony and deposition of ICE Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations Corey Price confirming the Biden administration knew its immigration priorities would cut enforcement in half and still implemented them. Price also confirmed that ICE is removing more than seven times fewer inadmissible immigrants than in 2012, booking in roughly half the number of immigrants than the previous administration; and
ICE training videos showing officials discussing the logistical problems created when federal authorities intentionally released tens of thousands of immigrants without charging documents—a formal legal document requiring immigrants to appear before an immigration judge.
Moody led a multistate effort calling on Mayorkas to step down over his “lack of leadership and intentional destruction of public safety immigration policies.”
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