Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act--Motion to Proceed--

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we have a job to do. That job is not optional. It is assigned to us by the United States Constitution--a document to which we have all sworn an oath under article I, section 3, clause 6. The Senate has the power and, I would add here, the duty to try all impeachments--not just some impeachments, not just those impeachments with which the majority party feels really happy about looking into, but all impeachments. It is the way it has always been in U.S. history.

When the House sends over Articles of Impeachment, if we have jurisdiction, which we clearly, plainly do here, it is our job to conduct a trial. What do I mean by that? Well, it is really a simple concept. In Articles of Impeachment, an accusation is made. Our job is to just decide whether that accusation is meritorious or not, whether the thing that has been accused is legitimate, whether the person who has been accused did the thing that was wrong--committed the high crime or misdemeanors spoken of in the Constitution.

We have a job to do, and it is a job that the Senate has always done when we have jurisdiction following the adoption of Articles of Impeachment.

Now, let's remember, this is a historic day. This hasn't happened very often. It is only the 22nd time in American history in which Articles of Impeachment have been adopted by the House. In this circumstance where we clearly, plainly have jurisdiction, there is no valid basis for us to do anything other than to decide whether the accusations are legitimate. We have to do that. We don't have the luxury of simply standing back and saying: Ah, we don't want to handle it.

Now, I know, I know, the Senate has found ways of shirking its responsibility over and over and over again in all of the operations of the Senate's work. Sometimes--most of the time, we sit as a legislative body, where we consider legislation. We pass law or decline to do so. Other times, we sit in an executive capacity, where we review Presidential nominations to consider them, whether we should confirm them, and also consider treaties. That is in an executive capacity. We also sometimes sit as a Court of Impeachment.

Now, in other areas, the Senate has found ways of shirking its responsibilities. We have handed off a whole lot of the lawmaking power to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in the executive branch. In our executive capacity, we have whittled down the number of executive branch nominees who are subject to Senate confirmation, even as the total volume of those individuals has increased. Now it seems we are determined yet again to whittle down our responsibilities in the one area where we have an affirmative duty, an affirmative obligation, an affirmative command within the Constitution requiring us to make a decision.

In the immortal words of Rush, in one of my favorite Rush songs of all time, called ``Freewill,'' if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Yet that is what Senate Democrats are planning to ask us to do within 24 hours--ask us to not decide, ask us to take these accusations in these Articles of Impeachment duly passed by a majority of the House of Representatives, the body in the Congress that has the sole power to impeach--it is not just 218-plus random people who decided to make the accusations against Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who heads the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. No. It is those particular 218-plus people in the House of Representatives who have that power.

You see, there is a reason why the impeachment power belongs exclusively to the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives is within the legislative branch--the branch of the Federal Government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. Within the Congress, within the legislative branch, they are the body most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. That is why they call it the People's House. They are the only ones entrusted with this power.

A majority of them, of that 435-Member body, has concluded that Alejandro Mayorkas must be impeached. Now, they didn't do it for light and transient reasons. They didn't do it because of a policy disagreement. No. A majority of the House of Representatives has chosen to impeach Secretary Mayorkas for the reason that he has affirmatively defied the commands of Federal law--the laws in particular that he is charged with administering.

They have identified at least seven or eight different provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including section 235(b)(2)(A) and 235(b)(1)(B)(ii) and 236(c) and 236(a) and 212(d)(5)(A), just to mention a few of them.

These Articles of Impeachment outline a myriad of instances in which Secretary Mayorkas has been commanded decisively, unambiguously to detain illegal immigrants pending one action or another, pending one determination or another as to their eligibility either for immigration parole or for asylum or for something else. He is required to detain them, and he didn't detain them.

These are just a few examples of the many things that he has done in direct contravention to a direct command by the law. And it is not just that he didn't do the things that he was commanded to do; it is that he did the exact opposite of those things. He was commanded, for example, not to exercise his immigration parole authority under 212(d)(5)(A). He is not allowed to do that categorically. He is allowed to do that only for discrete, individualized, particularized circumstances in which there is a profound, pronounced humanitarian or public need. Yet he issued all these categorical parole orders, creating categorical immigration parole programs allowing for literally hundreds of thousands of people a year to be brought into this country lawlessly, without documentation, without just cause to be brought into the United States. He made illegal immigrants legal by violating the affirmative command of the law.

It is not yet clear exactly what form the arguments presented by the Democrats tomorrow will take, but we do know this: Whether they call it a motion to dismiss or a motion to table, they want to not decide something that has to be decided, by order of the Constitution, by the Senate.

These accusations are real. They make a difference. They make a difference to the American people. These crimes--or I should say high crimes and misdemeanors--of which Secretary Mayorkas has been accused are not victimless crimes--far from it. These are offenses that have resulted in millions--on the low end, it is maybe 7 or 8 million; on the high end, it is more like 12, 13, or 14 million--of people who have come into this country unlawfully since January 20, 2021. The administration of Joe Biden has willfully, intentionally brought people into this country who aren't supposed to be here, who aren't allowed to be here. And it is not just the addition of those sheer numbers of people; it is the fact that among those people are many thousands of military-age Chinese males, many millions of military-age males from other countries, including hundreds of suspected terrorists, including thousands who come from countries that we pay close attention to because we know those countries are full of a lot of people who are bent on acts of lawlessness, violence, and terrorism against the United States of America.

This, of course, is just the beginning. This says nothing about the countless neighborhoods and schools and communities and jobs and lives that have been lost or violated or rendered unsafe or all of the above as a result of those who have been brought in not just with the acquiescence of but at the invitation of and with the assistance of the Secretary of Homeland Security, the very man whose job it is to protect us from those very things and who has very specific orders that he follows--orders that have been put into law by the Congress of the United States.

He is breaking the law over and over and over again specifically to allow for illegal immigration. So the Democrats are expected to come along tomorrow and say: Yeah, but we don't want to have to decide this. We don't want to have to decide it because, well, it is an election year, President Biden is on the ballot, and this is already an area where he is not doing well. And we have other Members of this body, including, you know, a certain Senator from Montana, for example, or maybe a certain Senator from Ohio, for example, or a Senator from Pennsylvania, among others, who are going to be up for reelection.

Sure, they would rather not have to address this. I understand why they would rather be doing something else, anything else, other than this. They would rather reorganize their sock drawer. Some of them would probably much rather have a root canal or another painful procedure without anesthesia than focus on this. But, alas, the Constitution is agnostic as to your sock-reorganization days. The Constitution doesn't care how often you go to the dentist and whether you get a root canal with or without anesthesia. But, you know, the Constitution does care about one thing in particular and very relevant here today, and that is that the Senate is to try all impeachments.

This is an impeachment. We have to try it, particularly in the absence of the case being rendered moot by a vacancy in office or death or otherwise--circumstances that are noticeably absent here. We have the duty to do this.

What happens when we don't? What happens if they get their way and they choose either to table or to dismiss or use some other fancy word to try to avoid doing their job? What happens? Well, more deaths occur--deaths like the tragic passing of Laken Riley, who was taken from us just a few weeks ago as a result of Secretary Mayorkas's lawless conduct along the border. But for his lawless conduct and his cavalier treatment of the law--in fact, his defiant refusal to abide by the law and, in fact, his dogged determination to break the law--Laken Riley would have still been alive. Countless others who have undergone horrific events within their families--murders, rapes, sexual assaults, robberies, drunk driving--all kinds of horrific trauma that the American people have endured. Some of that is going to happen from people who live here already. We shouldn't add to that by bringing in others who shouldn't be here to begin with. This is exactly the kind of thing that our immigration laws are designed to protect against.

As one who spent 2 years living and working along our southern border--living and working among and with the poorest of the poor, including many immigrants themselves, recent immigrants, in many cases--I can tell you, there is no group of people who has more cause to fear uncontrolled waves of illegal immigration than recent immigrants themselves, including, and especially, the poor who live on or near a border. It is their jobs, it is their families, it is their schools, it is their neighborhoods, it is their homes that are most directly put in jeopardy every single time we fail or, in the case of Secretary Mayorkas, we adamantly refuse to obey and enforce the law and we do everything that we can to undermine it as he has done.

There is no set of arguments I can imagine--I look forward to hearing what arguments might be had tomorrow, might be presented tomorrow--that could be presented with any kind of a straight face that could say we need not address the merits of this accusation--because there are none.

Perhaps, they will argue that this is an accusation amounting to mere maladministration--he didn't do a good job. That is not at all what we have here. Even if that is what we have here, that still wouldn't mean that they didn't have to try the case and come up with an answer as to whether or not he did what they said he did.

But the impeachment power goes back some, you know, two and a half centuries to the dawn of the Republic. Nearly two and a half centuries ago, when we became a country, we relied heavily on the legal systems-- a tradition, in some cases--of the terminology used in England. And during the early years of the Republic, we had individuals who were familiar with our Constitution who were also familiar, having practiced in the law at the time of the Revolution and some cases before then-- they knew the meaning of these words.

Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story is one of those individuals who lived, practiced, and wrote at and after the time of the American Revolution, during the early decades of our young Republic. And he explained that, among other things, an impeachment could be found, high crime and misdemeanor could be committed where, for instance, a lord admiral who was found to have neglected the safeguard of the sea. It is, perhaps, the most directly analogous comparison he makes to the Secretary of Homeland Security, that would be, you know, best described perhaps as a dereliction of duty, a failure to do one's job. If that--a lord admiral neglecting the safeguard of the sea--if that was a high crime and misdemeanor, it follows for sure--it is even more certain-- that the Secretary of Homeland Security, having defied more than a half dozen direct commands of Federal law and done the exact opposite of those things, has also committed a high crime and misdemeanor.

Now, maybe some in this body disagree. Maybe some in this body believe that the facts are different than they have been alleged here. Well, that is what a trial is for. That is why we don't just take the word of the House of Representatives for it. We do our job over here. We have to review the accusation, and we have to review it against the backdrop of what arguments and evidence they present to us.

We will be sworn in tomorrow at 1 p.m. to be finders of fact and to be judges of law relevant to the impeachment accusation. If we decide not to decide, we still have made a choice. We shouldn't do that here. Doing that here would be a dereliction of duty. Doing that here would be profoundly disrespectful to the hundreds of millions of Americans who elected us and, especially, to the families of those--like the family of Laken Riley and countless others--whose lives have been permanently and tragically disrupted by the lawlessness exhibited by Secretary Mayorkas.

We must do our job. We must hold a trial. That trial must culminate in a finding of guilt or innocence. The Constitution and our commitment to it requires nothing less.

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