Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have sent a message to the Department of Homeland Security secretary announcing that they have “grounds for impeachment” if he does not correct his “gross dereliction of duty” at the border.
In the letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, Cruz and Graham used data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to show that the border crisis has worsened since Mayorkas took office almost two years ago.
“This is gross dereliction of duty and, if not corrected swiftly, could provide grounds for impeachment,” they said in the letter obtained by Fox News.
“Your failure to faithfully enforce this nation’s immigration laws and willful blindness to the very real humanitarian crisis at our southern border amounts to a gross dereliction of duty and a violation of your oath of office,” the letter continued.
The senators noted that illegal immigration and drug trafficking were just two issues causing a “public health and national security threat.”
“Despite the heroic efforts by the men and women of Border Patrol, who operate with very little support from Washington, D.C., you have failed to achieve any semblance of operational control of the southern border,” they added.
From the data, there have been “over 4.4 million illegal crossings, including over 3.5 million apprehensions by CBP and at least 900,000 gotaways, who evaded apprehension.”
They also mentioned the drug smuggling by Mexican cartels with China-supplied drug ingredients, which has led to the “fentanyl-fueled” opioid pandemic that killed over 100,000 Americans last year.
“This amounts to a multi-billion dollar business for transnational criminal organizations, who then launder the money out of the United States and back into China,” they said.
“This lucrative illicit enterprise continues to thrive—while Americans die—all because DHS has ceded control of our southern border to the cartels for political gain,” Graham and Cruz added.
They also stressed that “chaos” at the border “presents a prime opportunity for terrorists to enter the United States undetected.”
In fiscal year 2022, at “least 78 individuals on the Terrorist Screening Database” were apprehended by border patrol agents.
“It is a near certainty that terrorists have already entered the United States undetected, taking advantage of the lenient border policies you have put into place,” they said.
The senators also mentioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ failure to visit the border since taking office.
“Vice President Harris apparently shares this same delusion. Perhaps if she or President Biden would visit the southern border and actually see the unending surge of illegal immigration, illicit drugs and human suffering, the White House would feel differently,” they wrote.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has also been a big supporter of impeaching Mayorkas. “Mayorkas deserves it,” he told the Washington Times.
