Accountability — the fact of being responsible for what you do, and being able to give a satisfactory response for it — has long been missing from the Biden administration’s handling of the surge of illegal immigration at our southwest border.

This week, House Republicans began an effort to restore that missing accountability — by launching an impeachment hearing against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It’s long overdue. (RELATED: CHAD WOLF And ROBERT LAW: The American People Don’t Want To Be Complicit In Human Trafficking At The Border)

That the southwest border is in crisis cannot be disputed. The numbers from December are in, and they’re not just not good, they’re actually the worst ever — Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered more than 300,000 aliens last month, the highest number ever recorded for a single month.

And the government reported that over the last fiscal year, there had been 2,475,669 encounters at the Southwest border, the highest yearly total on record.

Since Joe Biden became president and launched his open-borders policy, CBP has encountered more than 7 million aliens crossing our Southwest border — and then, under one set of regulations or another, has released the vast majority of them into the country.

The situation is so bad that on Monday, Mayorkas admitted to Border Patrol agents that “above 85%” of illegal immigrants are released into the country after being apprehended at the southwest border.

Even worse, an increasing number of those apprehended at the Southwest border are on the U.S. Government’s official terrorist watch list — 169 on that watch list were caught in the last fiscal year, with another 98 caught the year before, in fiscal 2022. With Hamas at war with Israel, and the U.S. strongly backing Israel, prudence would dictate that we redouble efforts to defend our border against the possibility that terrorists might take advantage of the porous border to enter the United States for the purpose of launching terrorist attacks from the inside.

Despite these grim facts, Mayorkas has repeatedly told Congress, under oath, that the border is “secure” and that the U.S. government maintains operational control of the border. (RELATED: BETSY MCCAUGHEY: Your Tax Dollars Are Paying Lawyers To Invent More ‘Rights’ For Migrants)

House Homeland Safety Committee Chairman Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee, disagrees. Said Green last week, in Eagle Pass, Texas, where he had joined more than 60 of his fellow Republican Congressmen in a visit to the border: “The greatest domestic threat to the national security and the safety of the American people is Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He, through his policies, has defied and subverted the laws passed by the United States Congress. He has defied multiple court orders. He has lied numerous times to the United States Congress. He has, under oath, stated things that were blatantly, obviously incorrect. He has broken his oath to defend this country … It’s clear this is intentional … The cause of the problem is Alejandro Mayorkas.”

Chairman Green is heading up the impeachment effort against Mayorkas. On Wednesday, he held his committee’s first impeachment hearing.

Entitled “Havoc in the Heartland: How Secretary Mayorkas’ Failed Leadership Has Impacted the States,” the hearing gave an opportunity to attorneys general from Montana, Oklahoma, and Missouri to discuss from their point of view the effects of Mayorkas’ failure to secure the border.

Some wonder what impeachable offense Mayorkas may have committed. Green has an answer: “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 has endangered their fellow Americans, betrayed the public trust, or represented a neglect of duty,” he said in opening the hearing.

“Secretary Mayorkas has brazenly refused to enforce the laws passed by Congress that knowingly made our country less safe,” Green continued. “What we are seeing here is a willful violation of his oath of office by Secretary Mayorkas.”

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen agreed. “[T]he reality is that no amount of funding or resources will change the status quo as long as Secretary Mayorkas is in charge. It’s not negligence and it’s not incompetence. It’s ideology and intransigence. By willfully and intentionally failing to enforce our nation’s immigration laws, Secretary Mayorkas has violated his oath of office and breached the trust placed in him by the American people.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Kamala Harris Hasn’t Called Guatemala In Months To Discuss Immigration, Central American Country Says)

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey agreed, too: “Secretary Mayorkas, either at the direction of his superiors or of his own volition, has abdicated his responsibilities. He has failed to uphold his oath of office. He has failed to enforce our nation’s immigration laws. And he has failed to do that which is most fundamental to his mission: protect our border.”

The House Judiciary Committee in 2019 (note – that is, under the chairmanship of U.S. Rep. Gerald Nadler, Democrat of New York) explained during the first Trump impeachment, the term
high Crimes and Misdemeanors” in the Constitution refers to “acts committed by public officials, using their power or privileges, that inflicted grave harm on our political order.”

It was meant to give Congress the power to remove executive branch officials “for egregious misconduct” or those who have “abused, abandoned, or sought personal benefit from their public trust — and who threatened the rule of law if left in power.”

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 65 that impeachment includes “those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

Mayorkas has abused his office. He has failed to enforce the laws of the land, and has in fact subverted them. He has injured the body politic.

He has violated the public trust. To restore accountability, to reestablish responsibility, Mayorkas should be impeached, and convicted and removed from office.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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