Apparently it’s not enough for House Republicans to continue lurching forward with their baseless, unprecedented impeachment effort against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It appears they want to kick him out of the country he serves as well. Tucked in Republicans’ final report is language calling for “deporting” Mayorkas from his job. In case you missed it, Secretary Mayorkas is a naturalized U.S. citizen, the highest ranking Latino in the Biden administration, and the first Latino to head the department.
“This Committee, through these articles of impeachment, begins the process of deporting Secretary Mayorkas from his position on account of his failure to comply with his official duties,” states page 127 of the GOP House Homeland Security Committee’s report, “and thereby allow his position to be filled by someone willing to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws once again.”
This is a disgusting and bigoted attack labeling anyone that Republicans don’t like as “deportable” – yet it’s their mainstream position. Otherizing and deporting is a central part of the agenda put forward by indicted former President Donald Trump, who is seeking a chilling mass purge of undocumented immigrants, as well as the termination of birthright citizenship via executive fiat, threatening U.S. citizen children with deportation from their own country.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas is a U.S. citizen, a member of the Cabinet, and a Cuban-American refugee whose family escaped the Holocaust. And still, the GOP can't stop otherizing him and treating him as not fully American, saying they want to "deport" him from his job. pic.twitter.com/kLxjE97UdS
— America's Voice (@AmericasVoice) February 5, 2024
The New York Post reported that an unnamed committee source claimed House Republicans “were merely talking about removing Mayorkas from his job, not from the country,” and that the report was simply referencing a prior quote where a law professor “simply compares the punitive aspects of impeachment and deportation.”
Uh huh. As if the white nationalist and antisemitic replacement theory was not driving this very sham impeachment effort. No legalese can paper over the casual ethnic nationalism in their choice of language.
Plus, we’re supposed to think it’s just coincidence that this sort of language just happened to be used in a political attack targeting a former refugee and high-ranking Latino official? Come on. It’s hard to believe the NY Post’s anonymous “source on the committee” when there have been so many other instances where Republicans have called for deporting non-white and immigrant-born Americans. Recall that while campaigning for failed GOP candidate Herschel Walker in 2022, 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley – who is busy telling media and primary voters that she’s the anti-Trump – said Georgia-born Senator Raphael Warnock should be deported.
“‘So the only person we need to make sure we deport is Warnock,’ she said to a cheering crowd,” The New York Times reported at the time
Then last week, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Mike Collins (R-GA) teamed up to say that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – also a former refugee and naturalized U.S. citizen – should be deported. They’re so deportation obsessed they’d probably respond ‘deportation!’ when asked for their names at Starbucks.
Chairman Mark Green goes deep in the antisemitic playbook to dehumanize Secretary Mayorkas comparing him to a reptile. As if comparing him to NIXON (who actually committed crimes) wasn't bad enough. Hey @RepMarkGreen your racism is showing. https://t.co/vNuJTyuZ4v
— Douglas Rivlin 🇺🇲 (@douglasrivlin) February 6, 2024
But even as the House committee attempted a walkback of sorts on this ugly “deport” language, it continued its ugly verbal attacks against Mayorkas. Politico’s Olivia Beavers reported that GOP House Homeland Security Committee chair Mark Green referred to Mayorkas, who is Jewish, as a “reptile.” This claim is rooted in antisemetism. Jewish groups have already expressed deep concern to this sham impeachment in large part to the trove of antisemitic, white supremacist, and anti-immigrant conspiracy theories being used to drive this effort.
“We’ve seen the violent, deadly impact that these antisemitic, white supremacist conspiracy theories have on our communities,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “Members of Congress who brand themselves as crusaders against antisemitism are now simultaneously normalizing this dangerous hate that endangers the lives of Jews and so many others, as well as our democracy. We won’t stand silently by when our safety – and the safety of so many others – is used as a political football.”
And Abraham Foxman, the longtime head of the Anti-Defamation League said in a Time op-ed entitled “The Conspiracy Theories Behind the Drive to Impeach Mayorkas”:
All this against the backdrop of a presumptive nominee for president repeatedly accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country” – the same trope used to rally Germans against Jews in order to “protect their own blood.” This racialized hatred dehumanized Jews and helped everyday Germans to tolerate the systematic murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust…You don’t have to be a Holocaust survivor like me to be concerned.
“For Republicans, it doesn’t matter if you are a citizen or a high government official, if you are Latino or a refugee, you will never be fully American,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “They use language to ‘other’ Secretary Mayorkas and say they want to ‘deport’ him from his job no matter how many times he takes the oath of citizenship himself or administers it to other people. It is shameful and disgusting.”
