WASHINGTON D.C. – Today, Congressman Dave Joyce (OH-14) released the following statement on his vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

“In February 2021, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution and pledged to faithfully discharge the duties of his office. The Secretary of Homeland Security has the solemn duty to secure and protect United States and advance the safety of the American people.

“During his tenure, the United States has experienced an unprecedented crisis at our southern border that has emboldened cartels, cost millions of dollars, increased the deadly flow of fentanyl, and risked the lives of countless Americans. The House Committee on Homeland Security has conducted a full and thorough investigation over the last year into Secretary Mayorkas and his handling of this crisis. 

“After careful consideration of the evidence, I believe that Secretary Mayorkas has willfully and systemically refused to comply with the law and has taken several intentional actions that have made Americans less safe. His guidance to his employees has directed them to ignore statutory requirements put in place for security reasons in the name of logistical convenience, and he has blamed the need for these directives on a lack of available detention resources. Yet when Secretary Mayorkas sat in front of my subcommittee last year, he defended the Administration’s funding request that asked for 9,000 fewer detention beds than we funded in FY 2023. His reasoning for instituting weaker enforcement practices is that the Department doesn’t have the resources to comply with the law, but when he came to Congress to request resources, he asked for less funding and less capacity.  

“Since President Biden has taken office, under this mandate, we have endured 8 million encounters nationwide with over 6.7 million at our Southwest border in addition to 1.7 million known got-aways. The number of border encounters in FY 2023 represents a 100 percent increase in encounters since FY 2019. In FY 2023, 169 individuals whose names appear on the terrorist watchlist were detained. There were also 35,433 aliens arrested by CBP who had prior criminal convictions. That begs the question of how many of those got-aways were also terrorists, convicted criminals, or brought fentanyl into our country.

“The American people deserve to have confidence that their public officials will act in their best interests. Through his actions and his constant attempts to mislead Congress and the American people, Secretary Mayorkas has broken that public trust.”