Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia defended Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas Sunday, saying impeaching him would be “unfair.”
“First of all, it’s an unfair charge. I think the gentleman is very competent. He can do a good job,” Manchin told CBS host Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “They need to unleash him, let him do his job. That’s what I have said before and I’ll say it now.” (RELATED: Dem Senator Dismisses Opposition To Immigration As A ‘Far-Right’ Concern)
Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, who will be nominated by House Republicans to be Speaker of the House when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, threatened Mayorkas with impeachment in November unless the secretary of Homeland Security resigned.
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United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) encountered over 2.3 million migrants in Fiscal Year 2022, with another 230,000 in October, the first month of the new fiscal year, according to official figures, while another 600,000 migrants evaded CBP, Fox News reported. Mayorkas has claimed on multiple occasions that the border is “secure,” prompting Republicans demands that he resign.
“With that, we have got to do, basically, immigration reform,” Manchin added. “My state of West Virginia needs more workers. We need people that want to come here for the right reason, to provide for their family a better quality of life.”
Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina reportedly started work on legislation that would legalize those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program while reinstating Title 42, a program that allows the U.S. to turn away migrants due to COVID-19 concerns and is set to expire Dec. 21 following a ruling by United States District Judge Emmet Sullivan.
“There has to be a legal pathway forward. That’s all we’ve been talking about. The 2013 piece of legislation that we worked on and passed in a bipartisan way in the Senate never got a vote in the House,” Manchin said. “Use that as the building block. That was a piece of legislation that was responsible and reasonable, and it basically all centered around border security. But it gave a legal pathway forward to come into this country, work your way to legal citizenship.”
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