GOP, DHS clash over obstruction claims ahead of Mayorkas impeachment

As House Republicans prepare to mark up a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, they’ve increasingly focused on claims he’s obstructed their investigation — igniting another dispute with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) last week sent a letter claiming DHS has failed to respond to several of the requests embedded in some 51 different letters, leaving 173 outstanding requests.

To Green, “refusal to comply with our requests for the information and obstruction of our investigations are further evidence of his willful abuse of power and breach of trust,” he wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

DHS called the letter “merely the latest evidence-free attack on the Department by the House Homeland Security Committee majority,” one that comes after Green’s team teed up “an unprecedented and inordinate volume of requests and imposes unrealistic and arbitrary timelines as part of their political playbook.”

The letter from Green comes on the heels of a decision to proceed to an impeachment vote without in-person testimony from Mayorkas — another dispute between the two sides, as the secretary offered to testify but was unavailable on the hearing date set by the committee that fell as he was hosting a Mexican delegation.

But what has been a consistent complaint from Green since taking over the gavel could also become one of the panel’s impeachment articles, now set to be marked up Tuesday.

According to reporting from Axios, House Republicans are eyeing four articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, a plan that comes after they’ve largely focused on other arguments in seeking to boot the secretary from his job.

GOP leaders have argued Mayorkas is defying immigration laws, failing to detain and deport as many migrants as they would like — something they say makes problems at the border “intentional.” They’ve also accused him of abusing parole authority that allows those who might not meet immigration requirements to temporarily enter the country — something they say flouts its intended use on a case-by-case basis. And they have also said he’s violated the Secure Fence Act, which defines the border as operationally controlled only if not a single person or piece of contraband illegally enters the country — a standard of perfection that has never been met. 

GOP leaders have similarly argued Mayorkas has violated his oath of office and is derelict in his duty, borrowing a military term legal experts say is an odd fit for impeachment. 

While it’s not clear whether obstruction would be one of the arguments, it’s been a running complaint and a factor in Republicans’ decision to move forward with impeachment.

“Refusing to provide this information to Congress limits our ability to conduct investigations, and we will consider this consistent pattern of obstruction as we move forward with his impeachment,” Green said in a statement to The Hill.

“This latest letter may have been sent in January 2024, but it reflects the difficulty my committee has experienced in requesting and obtaining information on vital homeland security matters from Secretary Mayorkas’ department. That ultimately is a failure of leadership and further demonstration that Secretary Mayorkas does not view his obligations to Congress very seriously.”

It’s an accusation being leveled at a secretary who has testified before Congress more than any other Biden Cabinet official.  

However, the extent to which DHS has rebuffed Green’s demands are more complex than the statistics he points to.

Of the 20,000 pages of documents DHS has turned over to the whole of congressional committees that have overseen the agency since Republicans took control of the lower chamber, 13,000 of those have gone to the House Homeland Security Committee alone. 

And Green’s tally of 173 requests includes some that are still in process, like those in response to a subpoena asking for information relating to the Afghanistan withdrawal, for which DHS is in the midst of a rolling production of more than 1 million pages of documents. The department had already sent 6,500 pages of documents in response to the request when Green subpoenaed them for “failure to provide satisfactory documents,” complaining some were redacted or illegible.

“Rather than request information for legislative purposes, as the process is intended, CHS floods the department with an unprecedented and inordinate volume of requests and imposes unrealistic and arbitrary timelines, as part of their political playbook. This conduct undermines the Department’s ability to respond effectively, not only to CHS, but to all of Congress,” DHS said in a statement, referring to the Committee on Homeland Security (CHS). 

“Regardless of the majority’s ongoing political distractions, including their baseless, unconstitutional and pre-ordained impeachment, the Department is committed to and will continue to respond to congressional oversight requests in good faith, all while working to protect our nation from terrorism and targeted violence, secure our borders, respond to natural disasters, defend against cyberattacks, and more.”   

Many of Green’s requests give a two-week deadline to turn around information. While many portions of those requests have been lingering for months, some of those on his list have been “delinquent” for just a few days.

A DHS official said the 173 outstanding items also include duplicative requests, in which the committee is asking for information already given through another similar request.

And DHS has also responded to some letters by providing the committee more than 200 “informational engagements” over the last several months, a DHS official said, a category that includes briefings, meetings and other types of roundtables. 

Committee Democrats accused Green of trying to drown DHS with requests while arguing the Biden administration has been much more responsive than the department was under the Trump administration.

“Chairman Green’s attempt to pile-on phony obstruction charges to the Republicans’ sham impeachment of the Secretary just shows how truly desperate he is after legal experts testified before the Committee that there are no constitutional grounds for impeachment,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement to The Hill.  

“In fact, under Secretary Mayorkas, DHS has been and continues to be responsive to an inordinate number of Congressional requests — including ongoing production of thousands of pages of documents in response to the Majority’s subpoenas. This responsiveness is in complete contrast to the Trump administration, which routinely ignored congressional requests — and subpoenas — while Chairman Green and his Republican colleagues said and did absolutely nothing.”

A Republican committee source accused Democrats of being “more interested in playing hall monitor than in working with us to compel DHS to provide the vital information at the heart of these requests.”

“While DHS has complied in some instances with rolling productions, they’ve done so only after sustained pressure by the committee,” the source said, pointing to the request for information on Afghanistan.

“Rolling productions become an evasion tactic when the timeline is stretched out with no end in sight, and information provided is unresponsive to the Committee’s requests. Additionally, the offer of briefings and meetings is all well and good, but it also demonstrates that the department is unwilling or unable to provide documentation on these important issues.”

To Thompson’s point, under the Trump era officials declined to appear for the annual worldwide threats hearing for the last two years of the administration, rebuffing the tradition of gathering top national security officials before Congress to review the threat landscape.

Then-DHS leader Chad Wolf also defied a subpoena, receiving a bipartisan rebuke from then-Chair Thompson and GOP ranking member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) after the department failed to provide a single document relating to a broad border security request.

Mayorkas has appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee twice this year, in a budget hearing and in the annual worldwide threats hearing. 

In the late summer, Green attempted to secure Mayorkas for a border-related hearing, though DHS declined, asking to address the matter in the November hearing to review threats to the homeland, calling it ​​”the appropriate forum to discuss border security issues.”

But Green pointed to that declination as a rationale for moving ahead with the impeachment inquiry after Mayorkas was unable to attend a Jan. 18 hearing following an invite sent two weeks in advance.

“Mayorkas’s passive-aggressiveness about trying to schedule us is a smokescreen. That’s all it is. And we’re just not going to play that game. We’ve been after him to come since August. And he keeps saying no,” Green told The Hill last week.

“So we’re not playing the game anymore.”

Updated: 10:16 a.m.