Mayorkas impeachment trial ends before senators even voted for acquittal or conviction

17 April 2024

The U.S. Senate officially voted Wednesday on party lines to adjourn as a court of impeachment in the trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

CNN reported that senators voted 51-49 in favor of adjournment after two other party-line votes to dismiss each article of impeachment as unconstitutional. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) notably voted "present" on the motion to dismiss the first article, rather than with the rest of her party. Wednesday's vote to adjourn officially ended the impeachment trial of Secretary Mayorkas — the first cabinet secretary to be impeached in roughly 150 years — before members even got the opportunity to vote to convict or acquit.

“We want to address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said Tuesday. “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement.”

Prior to the trial, Republicans complained that should Mayorkas' trial be scuttled by the Democratic-run Senate without them having the chance to even make their case on the merits of the articles themselves, it would set a dangerous precedent. But Schumer shut that argument down in a floor speech.

"Talk about awful precedents. This would set an awful precedent for Congress," he said. "Every time there’s a policy agreement in the House, they send it over here and tie the Senate in knots to do an impeachment trial? That’s absurd. That’s an abuse of the process. That is more chaos.”

After the articles of impeachment were introduced on Wednesday, Senate President pro tempore Patty Murray (D-Washington), who presided over the trial, recognized Schumer, who laid out the rules for debate. Republicans were given the opportunity to have 60 minutes to debate each article, with members of each party having the chance to bring up points of order to be considered before votes to dismiss the articles. While some Republicans attempted to make motions that were effectively speeches condemning Mayorkas for overseeing a high number of border crossings, Murray shut down those speeches and repeatedly demanded Republicans to make a motion or be seated.

In one exchange, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made a speech criticizing the Biden administration's border policies — what he referred to as "the worst criminal invasion in our nation's history" — only for Murray to remind him that the Senate was in a "non-debatable position," meaning he needed to make a motion or sit down. Then, after Cruz made a motion to move to closed session to proceed with debate, Schumer shut him down.

"In our previous consent request, we gave your side a chance for debate in public, where it should be. And your side objected. We are moving forward," Schumer said.

Republicans maintain that Mayorkas' impeachment was justifed, arguing that he was failing to uphold U.S. immigration law. However, Mayorkas countered that border crossings were high due to immigration laws not having been updated since 1996. The Homeland Security secretary worked with senators — including Sens. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) — on the bipartisan immigration bill that was labeled the most conservative immigration legislation in a generation. However, efforts to pass the bill effectively ran aground after former President Donald Trump came out against it.

Trump said multiple times on the campaign trail that he didn't want Biden to oversee the passage of immigration legislation, and that he would rather prefer to sign a border security bill into law himself in the event he wins the election in November. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) accused Trump of exploiting the issue for political purposes.

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