By Wendy Reuer, Grand Forks Herald
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican U.S. representatives from North Dakota and Minnesota voted along party lines to impeach U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mayorkas was impeached by a vote of 214-213 on Tuesday, Feb. 13. He is the first Cabinet secretary since 1876 to be impeached by the House of Representatives.
The lower chamber first voted and failed to impeach Mayorkas in November, and failed on a second attempt just last week. GOP leaders were able to revive the articles against Mayorkas with Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s, R-La., return this week after treatment for blood cancer.
North Dakota's sole representative Kelly Armstrong voted in favor of impeachment, saying Mayorkas made a conscious choice to disregard federal law.
"For three years he has refused to secure the southern border," Armstrong said in a news release. "The House did our duty and impeached the worst cabinet secretary in our lifetime."
Minnesota Republican Reps. Tom Emmer, Michelle Fishbach, Pete Stauber and Brad Finstad voted in favor of impeachment. DFL Reps. Angie Craig, Betty McCollum, Dean Phillips and Illhan Omar voted against impeachment.
Fischbach, who represents Minnesota's seventh congressional district ,which includes Moorhead, said Mayorkas refused to enforce federal immigration law, risking national security.
"The American people are feeling pain of his failures every day, and he has lost their trust and the trust of the Members of the House of Representatives," Fischbach said in a release.
Three Republicans — Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., Ken Buck, R-Colo. and Tom McClintock, R-Calif. — voted against impeachment.
Gallagher, Buck and McClintock each raised concerns that the Mayorkas impeachment didn’t meet the bar laid out under the Constitution for impeachment. The constitutionality of the impeachment vote has been a voiced concern from Republican-aligned experts who have publicly urged Republicans against the vote before Tuesday's action.
The trial will now go to the Senate where a two-thirds vote, or 67 senators, would be needed to convict and remove the secretary. A conviction in the Senate seems unlikely given Democrats hold a majority in the chamber. Several Republican senators have also rebuked the House's impeachment efforts.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., called the impeachment “obviously dead on arrival” and “the worst, dumbest exercise and use of time," according to NBC News.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D. has not issued a statement regarding the issue.
