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Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy is calling for the impeachment of the Biden administration official who is in charge of securing the Southern border.
In a letter to his House Republican colleagues, Rep. Roy warned that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had “embarked on the purposeful abandonment of the laws of the United States.”
JUST IN — Texas Rep. Chip Roy has formally asked all House Republicans "to uniformly and publicly support impeaching" DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas "for fundamentally refusing to secure the Southern border and endangering American lives in the process."@RepChipRoy pic.twitter.com/MnclwR37wa
— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) March 16, 2022
“While the world’s attention has been directed toward Ukraine, the border of the United States is more dangerous, broken, and unsecure than ever. It demands our immediate attention and collective call for the impeachment of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas,” he said.
He said that the secretary was “following the orders of President Biden or acting on his own – he has embarked on the purposeful abandonment of the laws of the United States and the successful policies of the previous administration to secure our borders and protect our people.”
He said that Mayorkas’ actions “have resulted in the death and endangerment of Americans, damage to property and communities across the border, loss of operational control of our border to dangerous cartels imprisoning thousands of migrants sold into human trafficking, and the fueling of deadly drug poisonings of thousands of Americans.”
He argued that “it is most certainly a ‘high crime or misdemeanor’ for a public officer to purposefully endanger Americans while willfully ignoring one’s oath to enforce our laws.”
“Impeaching Secretary Mayorkas is our duty,” he said to his fellow Republicans. “We should call for it now – despite Democrat control of the House – and make the case for immediate border security better than any speeches we can give or bills we can introduce.”
In January, a leaked video showed a tense exchange between the head of the U.S. Border Patrol and several of his agents during a visit to the Laredo, Texas, border sector with Mayorkas.
The video, obtained by Fox News, showed Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz exchanging heated words with agents as Mayorkas reportedly looked on.
According to the network, Ortiz confirmed during the meeting that “morale is at an all-time low.”
“I do think that we’re losing too many agents,” Ortiz said. “As an organization, we gotta start taking care of each other.”
With Mayorkas in the room, he did acknowledge agents’ frustration as, since President Joe Biden took office and reversed most of former President Donald Trump’s border enforcement policies, record numbers of migrants have crossed illegally into the U.S.
“I get it,” Ortiz said. “You come to work, you’re frustrated. You’re upset because you didn’t get the desired outcome that you want. Doesn’t mean you give up.”
“We’re not,” one agent responded.
“I know you’re not,” Ortiz replied. “That’s why I’m saying, we don’t give up. We stay focused, we continue to do the job and the mission that we signed up for. We all signed up for it, we all raised our hand.”
But then the situation got more tense and heated words were exchanged.
“It’s kinda hard to say that when…” one agent began to say.
“It’s not hard to say it,” Ortiz fired back, as the video shows. “It may be hard for you to say it, I’ve been doing this for 31 years. It’s not hard for me to say it.”
Other agents then said, “you keep releasing criminal aliens into the country.”
Ortiz shot back: “You’re getting bogged down in the policies and the politics.”
But then several agents then said they’re not even allowed to use the term “illegal aliens.”
“You just said it,” Ortiz replied. “Ain’t nothing gonna happen to you.”
But agents still were not mollified by the answers they were getting, leading Ortiz to ask them, “Why are you guys getting caught up in semantics? … I’ve been doing this job as long as y’all.”
“That’s the problem, chief,” one agent interjected. “For evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That’s exactly what’s happening here. Good men are doing nothing. You’re allowing illegal aliens to be dropped off in communities.”
The USBP chief then insisted that agents were doing good for the country by rescuing migrants and interdicting criminals smuggling dangerous drugs like fentanyl into the U.S.
“And under this administration, in the last year, we’ve got the highest fentanyl deaths in the history of our country,” one person in the room fired back in response.
After another agent wondered aloud how much fentanyl was getting through, Ortiz responded: “I don’t know. We’re working on it.”
“And that’s the problem,” said another agent before someone cracked a joke to diffuse the tension, Fox News reported.
