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Floor Speech

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Mr. HAGERTY. Madam President, in our Nation's 248-year history, the House of Representatives has impeached individuals in 21 cases. Reflecting the grave, highly rare exercise of this constitutional power, the Senate has tried each such case, except where the person resigned office before the Senate trial, rendering such trial moot.

This includes two partisan Democratic impeachments of the former President--one in which the Republicans controlled the Senate and one in which it was equally divided.

Shattering norms, however, is becoming a defining theme for Democrats this year. Why are my Democratic colleagues so eager to shirk their constitutional duty and ignore an impeachment? Because they want to ignore the damning evidence of Secretary Mayorkas's willful violations of immigration law.

I can think of no better example than the Secretary's decision to willfully and knowingly exceed his parole authority set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act. That law permits the Secretary to grant parole but only on a case-by-case basis, temporarily, and ``for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit''; for example, when a person is in need of urgent medical care or the person needs to attend a family member's funeral. He has even created a new taxpayer-funded parole program to allow aliens from numerous countries to be flown directly into the United States.

He has abused his case-by-case parole authority beyond any degree imaginable. He is now flying 30,000 illegal aliens per month directly into the United States for resettlement.

This is a blatant violation of the law, and it is abuse of the parole law in particular. Two weeks ago, every single Senate Democrat voted against my appropriations amendment to defund this very parole flight program. That vote is impossible to explain to ordinary Americans. They see the absurdity of flying in tens of thousands of illegal aliens right in the midst of an illegal immigration crisis.

So, instead, partisan so-called fact checkers have recently been quibbling over which flights or which airports are being used. This is clearly an attempt to distract from the basic problem with this taxpayer-funded program, which is that it is illegal and it is absurd.

I understand why Democrats want to cover it up though. It is the same reason they don't want to consider these impeachment articles.

Similarly, the Secretary terminated contracts for border wall construction and refused to expend funds that Congress appropriated for this specific purpose.

Secretary Mayorkas's impoundment of funds is a clear attempt to usurp the will of Congress by refusing their mandate, our mandate, to build the border wall.

The Secretary has also replaced detention mandates in law with unlawful mass catch-and-release policies that encourage illegal immigration.

The law requires that illegal aliens are detained until they are deported, unless they are clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be allowed into the United States. Instead of complying with this requirement, the Secretary has released millions of illegal aliens into American communities.

We have seen the devastating effects of the Biden administration's illegal border policies. We have heard from Americans whose lives and property are being destroyed by droves of illegal aliens who are coming into the United States every single day.

We have heard from Border Patrol agents who want nothing more than to do their jobs and secure the border, but whose hands have been tied by the Mayorkas-led Department of Homeland Security.

The American people have seen the chaotic images of the southern border under this administration. They have witnessed the ravaging effects of illegal immigration in their own communities. This includes drug overdoses, violent crime, local disorder, and the national security threat of unknown bad actors from all over the world coming across our open border.

And 249 people on the Terrorist Watchlist have been encountered at the southern border just last year alone.

Since October, a record number of Chinese nationals--22,000, in fact--have been encountered by Border Patrol; in all, over 10 million illegal aliens have crossed the border under this Secretary's watch. The collapse of our southern border and the devastating consequences and future risks it has created for our Nation is the greatest national security risk we face as a nation.

The House of Representatives took the extraordinary step of impeaching a government official for his role in this, and yet Senate Democrats want to completely ignore all of this? They don't want you to hear about it. They want to sweep it under the rug in an election year.

The Secretary's alleged violations of law warrant a trial before the Senate. It warrants basic diligence in examining the evidence. And every Senator should go on record regarding the charges.

I have cosponsored resolutions by several colleagues establishing impeachment procedures that are in line with past Senate impeachment trials. We are open to debate on the details of the process, but there must be a process.

This is an important point: The current debate is not even whether or not Secretary Mayorkas is guilty as charged but whether we should even examine the question or whether, instead, as the Senate majority leader reportedly plans to do, we should just hide the evidence from the American people and avoid discussing this administration's failures at all costs.

Why? Because this is an election year. If the majority leader wishes to honor and preserve the world's greatest deliberative body, I urge him not to take this unprecedented step of blocking consideration of the impeachment articles against Secretary Mayorkas.

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