On Wednesday, the United States House of Representatives passed legislation that would completely defund the office of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
As the Daily Wire reports, the measure was passed as an amendment to appropriations legislation that will provide the DHS with tens of billions of dollars in the next fiscal year. The amendment to defund Mayorkas’ office exclusively was introduced by Congressman Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). In the final floor vote, 193 Republican members voted for the bill while 172 Democrats voted against it, as did one Republican. Another 72 members, 28 Republicans and 44 Democrats, were not present for the vote.
“The House just passed my amendment to defund the office of the DHS Secretary,” Biggs announced in a post on X. “Alejandro Mayorkas — who was impeached earlier this year — doesn’t deserve a single penny from American taxpayers.”
A previous attempt at defunding Mayorkas was introduced by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who introduced an amendment to reduce his salary to just $1; that amendment ultimately failed.
The vote comes four months after Mayorkas was impeached by the House in a narrow margin of 214 to 213, thus making him only the second Cabinet secretary in U.S. history to be impeached, and the first to be impeached since William Belknap, the Secretary of War, in 1876. Mayorkas was impeached on two articles of “willfully and systematically” refusing to enforce existing immigration laws, and “breaching the public trust” with false statements regarding the border crisis.
Despite the historic impeachment in February, the Democrat-controlled Senate voted in April to end Mayorkas’ trial without a vote on his guilt.
Mayorkas has faced perhaps more scrutiny and backlash than any other member of the Biden Cabinet due to his role in the ongoing mass migration crisis. Mayorkas has repeatedly made contradictory claims, suggesting that the southern border is secure while simultaneously blaming current issues on the Trump Administration.