Republican members of the House Homeland Security Committee have accused Alejandro Mayorkas, the current secretary of homeland security, of "dereliction of duty."

The congressmen said the secretary ought to be removed from office for her actions that have caused an unprecedented surge in the number of migrants crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, as The Epoch Times reported.

Democrats have dismissed the measure as a political attack that misuses a congressional power intended to punish extreme behavior, such criminal activity, while Republicans have made it clear that they think Mayorkas' administration is subpar.

Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and others asserted that Mayorkas was guilty of of "gross incompetence," as per Republican claims.

“The constitutional history is overwhelmingly clear on this subject. The Founders designed impeachment not just to remove officials engaged in criminal behavior, but those guilty of such gross incompetence that their conduct had endangered their fellow Americans, betrayed the public trust, or represented a neglect of duty.”

More Republican Concerns

Continuing with his introductory remarks, Green mentioned that a former DHS secretary stated 1,000 encounters every day "overwhelm the system" while Obama was president.

“Secretary Mayorkas says watch encounters have never averaged less than 3,000 per day, even going as high as 10,000 to 12,000 per day.

"Just a few days ago, internal CBP [Customs and Border Protection] numbers leaked to the media showed another 302,000 encounters at the southwest border alone in December.

The chairman continued by summarizing the changes made to border policy between the Obama and current administrations, noting that 82% of illegal aliens were detained by the Obama administration in 2013.

“In [Mayorkas’s] first year on the job that 82 percent number dropped to just 10 percent.”

Democrat Take

The "extreme MAGA Republican effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas was fully exposed as the political stunt that it is," said Democratic Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson of Mississippi in a statement he issued early last month regarding the impeachment campaign.

“The Homeland Security Committee Chairman said he did not want to create a ‘false hope’ that his partisan investigation of the secretary would lead to impeachment,” Thompson went on.

“But now, news reports indicate that members have been promised that impeachment will move through our committee. Apparently their baseless, so-called ‘investigation’ was just a shell game to justify a pre-determined, evidence-free impeachment over policy differences rather than any Constitutional grounds.

“Instead of their constant chaos and political games, House Republicans should be working with Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration to fix our broken immigration system and provide DHS the resources it needs along the border now.”