Testifying before the House on Thursday, an Arizona woman who lost her daughter to fentanyl criticized Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for skipping his second impeachment hearing and refusing to answer for the policies that have allowed record inflows of fentanyl and illegal immigrants under President Biden.
When asked by Representative Michael McCaul (R., Texas) whether Mayorkas violated his oath of office in failing to secure the southern border, Josephine Dunn responded, “Yes, sir. I flew from Arizona to meet him and face him and ask him why. And he’s not here today. I did not know that until after I landed yesterday.”
McCaul then stated that the DHS chief “doesn’t have the decency to even show up.” Dunn agreed.
“Today is my daughter’s birthday. I would have much rather been home with my poor husband grieving her. I didn’t need to be here today,” said Dunn, a private citizen. “Whatever he’s doing, I hope it’s more important.”
Mayorkas is currently in Mexico meeting with government officials, McCaul pointed out.
“I’ll be meeting with Mexican officials later next week, and I may have a different story for them. I’m going to have your story that I will take to them,” the lawmaker told the mother.
The House Homeland Security Committee held its second and final hearing on Thursday to debate whether Mayorkas’s failure to enforce federal immigration law constitutes grounds for impeachment. Dunn and fellow Republican witness Tammy Nobles, whose daughter was raped and murdered in her own home by an MS-13 gang member who crossed the border illegally, argued that Mayorkas had violated the public trust and should be impeached.
The Democrats called a constitutional law scholar as their witness who argued that Mayorkas should not be impeached for what amount to policy differences between the Biden administration and Congressional Republicans.
Mayorkas has said publicly that he’s willing to testify before the House but failed to attend both Thursday’s hearing and the first impeachment hearing on January 10.
Committee chairman Mark Green (R., Tenn.) sent a letter to Mayorkas on Wednesday inviting him to submit written testimony since he didn’t appear before the House for either hearing. Mayorkas has until ten days after the latest hearing to submit his testimony for the official record, Green noted.
The committee is expected to vote on Mayorkas’s impeachment on January 31, CNN reported Thursday, setting up a floor vote in the House for early February.
DHS spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg accused House Republicans of “wasting time,” calling the impeachment investigation a “harmful distraction from our critical national security priorities.”
Nobles argued that Mayorkas should be held personally accountable for her daughter’s death.
“She was killed three days after her 20th birthday. She spent three days being 20,” Nobles said. “I sent her a message on her birthday on July 24 that I was proud of the woman that she was becoming, and that I loved her. I didn’t know that would be my last message to tell her that I love her.”
“Her life was brutally taken, and she had no idea what to expect that day when she went to bed after getting off the night shift of work and . . . had no idea what was going to happen on July 27,” the mother added.
McCaul concluded his line of questioning by saying, “This is the personal side of this chaos created by this man,” referring to Mayorkas. “This is a personal life story of the cause and effect that has happened because of these failed policies on the border. It’s destruction and it’s death and it has to stop.”