Republican US House poised to vote whether to impeach Biden border chief

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday is expected to vote on whether to impeach President Joe Biden's top border official, accusing him of encouraging the record number of people who are entering the country illegally.

The House last week approved two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a near-unprecedented step to take against a member of a president's cabinet over a policy dispute.

With a narrow 219-212 majority, Republicans will need near unanimity to pass the measures, though even if they do the Democratic-majority Senate is all but certain to acquit Mayorkas.

House Republicans allege that Mayorkas was intentionally lax in securing the long border with Mexico and violated the public trust by making false statements to Congress.

Around 2 million migrants were arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2023.

Mayorkas has denied any wrongdoing and has defended his tenure.

The House vote would play out as the Senate attempts to debate a tough new bipartisan border security bill, which House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday said would be "dead on arrival" in his chamber.

Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has also railed against the bill.

The only other time the House voted to impeach a Cabinet member was in 1876, when a secretary of war was investigated for corruption. The Senate acquitted him.

"Secretary Mayorkas' actions, both in his intentional refusal to enforce our laws and abandoning the confidence of Americans, require us to act," House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole said on Monday as his panel prepared to set the rules for debating the impeachment charges before the full House.

"If he will not do his duty, then unfortunately, the House must do its constitutional duty," Cole said.

Democrats have condemned the impeachment exercise as an effort to score political points against Biden and his administration in the run-up to the November elections.

Representative Bennie Thompson, the senior Democrat on the panel, called the effort a "pre-planned, predetermined scapegoating of the secretary" made up with "cooked up vague, unprecedented grounds."

Democrats and some legal experts have said the impeachment charges fall well short of evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" under the Constitution's impeachment requirement.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Miral Fahmy)

By Richard Cowan