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Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I rise today because we really are at a very historic time for this Chamber. Soon, the House of Representatives is expected to send over Articles of Impeachment against a Cabinet officer for only the second time in our Nation's history. This is not routine business; instead, this is a very serious moment.

On February 13, the House agreed to Articles of Impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for ``willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law'' and ``breach of public trust.''

This Chamber will soon have a constitutional duty to uphold. I firmly believe that the U.S. Senate must conduct a full impeachment inquiry trial for Secretary Mayorkas. Our Constitution gives the Senate the responsibility and the duty to try all impeachments, and it requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate present before the Federal officer is convicted. That is a pretty high standard for a constitutional process.

For every impeachment in our history, the Senate has held some form of a trial unless the Federal officer has resigned prior to the trial. This time, it should be no different.

Under President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas, there have been more than 9.2 million illegal crossings along our country's southern border or, to put it another way, the average monthly encounters have increased 400 percent almost under the Biden-Mayorkas DHS.

The record illegal crossings this past February of 189,922 marked the seventh consecutive month of the highest number of encounters that these months have ever seen. On top of this, there have been 36 straight months with higher encounters at the southern border than any month under the Trump administration. I mean, these numbers are just shocking.

Still, and I have spoken on this before, it is just amazing to me that the President and Secretary Mayorkas haven't tried to change this at all.

Unfortunately, these statistics have become a regular occurrence under the leadership of Secretary Mayorkas, and he bears the responsibility for the worst border crisis of our Nation's history.

Let me be clear. As I said earlier, this crisis did not happen by accident. We have seen the Biden-Mayorkas DHS fail to uphold the law and secure our borders starting on day one of this administration. This broad and willful effort by the Biden administration to open our borders began by ending successful Trump-era policies that brought all those numbers down, like contracts to build the border wall, the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy--also known as Migrant Protection Protocols or MPP--and safe third country agreements.

Again, the numbers don't lie, and they certainly do not provide the administration with any cover, unlike the cover the administration gives daily by turning their back to the cartels that are making billions of dollars from human smuggling and drug trafficking operations as long as this crisis continues.

Furthermore, we have seen Secretary Mayorkas abuse the parole process, expanding the program more than any other prior administration, which has led to more than 3 million immigrants coming into our country who would otherwise have been inadmissible. Parole is supposed to be granted on a one-by-one, case-by-case basis, but under Secretary Mayorkas's leadership, DHS has created categorical parole programs to give entry to migrants from many South American and Caribbean countries with minimal vetting.

As the crisis has developed throughout President Biden's 3 years in office, nearly half of the migrants encountered on our southern border are coming from countries outside of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The immigration crisis on our southern border is now more multifaceted than ever. Why is that? Because it has been allowed to keep fomenting. The open border policies from the Biden-Mayorkas DHS have allowed all of this to happen. We truly have no idea who is entering our country illegally.

We have apprehended 336 individuals on the Terror Watchlist who have illegally crossed our southern border during this administration, but these are just the individuals we know of. To put this into perspective, only 14 terror suspects were apprehended between the ports of entry during the Trump administration--14 over 4 years; 336 in this administration.

Not knowing who is in our country is a national security crisis, and at a time of heightened national security, this is a chance we should not be willing to take.

We have also seen the Biden-Mayorkas DHS abuse the asylum process, expanding eligibility to admit a record number of asylum seekers, which has led to creating a decade-long delay and backlog in our immigration courts. This ensures that anyone who enters our country and passes the very low screening standard will be here for years without any fear of deportation.

This policy allowed the alleged killer of Laken Riley--a nursing student in Georgia who was brutally and senselessly murdered--to enter and remain in this country. Even though he was apprehended by our law enforcement on at least one occasion, he still was here. This will ever serve as a reminder that Secretary Mayorkas's catch-and-release policies have allowed the catastrophe at our southern border to impact every single community.

When our already-overwhelmed Border Patrol agents are faced with thousands of encounters per day of migrants claiming asylum, we know that some border crossers are able to slip through. These are the people who don't want to be caught, and they are the individuals we need to worry about the most. But don't just take my word for it. In a recent interview, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens referred to the situation at the southern border as a ``national security threat'' and that the 140,000 known ``got-aways'' are what is keeping--he says ``keeping me up at night.'' This is something that all of us should be concerned about and the ripple effect that this causes in communities far away from our southern border.

Additionally, the drugs flowing across our border are responsible for fueling the addiction epidemic that has devastated communities across this country, particularly in my home State of West Virginia. In West Virginia alone, it is estimated that during the year 2023, 1,327 residents died at the hands of illegal drugs. That is the highest per capita of any other State.

At the national level, the numbers are just startling. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, agents seized an alltime high of 27,293 pounds of fentanyl coming across the southern border in fiscal year 2023. That amount of fentanyl is enough to kill nearly 6 million people. However, what is even more troubling is that CBP reported that Federal officials are estimating they were only able to seize between 5 and 10 percent of all the fentanyl that has been smuggled through the southern border. With a Border Patrol that has been stretched unfathomably thin with very little support from this administration, there is no telling the amount of drugs that are getting through undetected.

Regarding the matter that will soon be before the Senate, the impeachment articles against Secretary Mayorkas make serious allegations and detail the crisis we have all seen unfolding for more than 3 years. It is unconscionable for Senator Schumer to dismiss these charges without allowing the Senate to hear the evidence. Doing so would deny this body from upholding our constitutional duty to hear a case and decide whether or not Secretary Mayorkas should be convicted or acquitted.

The decision to take up these Articles of Impeachment lies with Senator Schumer and the Senate Democrats. They must do the right thing and conduct a full trial.

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