By EFE
Mar 28, 2024, 16:42 PM EDT
The Republicans announced this Thursday that they will send the articles to the Senate on April 10 to begin the impeachment trial against Alejandro Mayorkas, the immigration chief of US President Joe Biden.
The president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, and the ten Republican legislators who act as prosecutors, marked that date, which is when Congress returns to its activity after a two-week recess.
The Republicans, in the majority in the Lower House, approved in February the impeachment charges against Mayorkas, US Secretary of Homeland Security, whom they blame for the increase in migration for having supposedly neglected the border with Mexico.
The charges are “violation of the public trust” and “systematic and deliberate refusal to comply with the law” by failing to properly handle the situation at the US-Mexico border.
Republicans bring the impeachment trial to the Senate at a time when migration is at the center of the American political and electoral agenda.
The Senate will now be the scene of the impeachment trial, with its 100 senators acting as members of a jury that needs a two-thirds majority to remove the secretary, something unlikely given that the Democrats are in control.
The office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, announced in a statement that “after the House impeachment managers present the articles to the Senate, senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the next day.” ”.
Some senators have explored the idea of dismissing the case without a trial taking place, something that only requires a simple majority.
It will be the second time that the Lower House has sent a Government secretary to impeachment in almost 150 years. The only time it had happened before was in 1876, when then-Secretary of War William Belknap was indicted but later acquitted by the Senate.
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