Washington, DC — The sham impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas moves to the Senate this week. Below are three key points from America’s Voice about the Mayorkas impeachment (each explained in more detail below):
- Republicans’ Mayorkas messaging has mainstreamed dangerous “replacement” and “invasion” conspiracies and lies
- Mainstreaming white nationalist conspiracies “fuels the threat landscape we encounter”
- The Mayorkas impeachment is a key component of the right-wing’s “blame Biden” political attack that started when Trump was in office
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The right-wing impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas was pre-baked from the start and has always been about political attacks instead of public policy, the constitution, or the goal of an orderly border. Yet despite the sham nature of the impeachment and the likelihood it will soon fizzle and fail in the Senate, the right-wing push has helped mainstream dangerous conspiracies and lies that have been tied to real acts of violence and continue to stoke dangers and divides today.”
Point 1: Republicans’ Mayorkas messaging has mainstreamed dangerous “replacement” and “invasion” conspiracies and lies
America’s Voice’s ongoing tracking has found:
- Since January 2023, 1,211 unique social media posts invoking “great replacement” or invasion language from official GOP Senate and House accounts
- At least 54 Republican members of Congress from the 118th Congress who have used language associated with the great replacement theory to call for Secretary Mayorkas’ impeachment.
- Limiting to just the House Republican Mayorkas impeachment managers: 170 unique social media posts from their official social media accounts since January 2023 that invoke such dangerous conspiracies
Point 2: Mainstreaming white nationalist conspiracies “fuels the threat landscape we encounter”
- During past Capitol Hill testimony, Secretary Mayorkas has repeatedly warned about domestic terrorism that could be inspired by great replacement and “invasion” language, with real world instances of deadly violence already seen in places like El Paso, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh.
- For example, during a congressional hearing last July, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) asked Sec. Mayorkas: “When elected officials repeat great replacement rhetoric, including the language of invasion, are they putting a target on the backs of immigrants and people of color?” Secretary Mayorkas responded, “It certainly fuels the threat landscape we encounter.”
- More recently, the FBI arrested a man, “galvanized by anti-immigrant rhetoric about an ‘invasion,’” who had “plotted to launch an attack on migrants and federal law enforcement at the southern border using explosives and sniper rifles,” as Tess Owen of Vice recently reported.
- Also read an opinion essay in TIME published from former Anti-Defamation League (ADL) leader Abraham Foxman that highlights the dangerous conspiracies central to House Republicans’ drive to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “The Conspiracy Theories Behind the Drive to Impeach Mayorkas”
Point 3: The Mayorkas impeachment is a key component of the right-wing’s “blame Biden” political attack that started when Trump was in office
Republicans’ priority on immigration and the border has never been problem solving or maintaining an orderly border, but instead driving a relentless and cynical political message and trying to pin blame on the Biden administration and Democrats. The Mayorkas impeachment has been pre-baked and is best viewed through this political lens. Recall that:
- House Republicans pledged to impeach Secretary Mayorkas even before they had taken control of the House of Representatives, let alone held hearings to examine the supposed impeachment evidence (see the April 2022 comments of then GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, for example)
- The pre-baked Mayorkas impeachment fits alongside right-wing messengers’ drumbeat blaming Biden’s policies for a rise in border encounters occurring during the Trump presidency.
- In early August 2020, Tom Homan appeared on Fox News to blame an increase in border apprehensions on Joe Biden—a full five months before Biden took office.
- In November 2020, Homan said on Fox, “The border numbers are already going up because they think Joe Biden is going to be the president… ‘It’s a Biden effect. It’s already happening.’” Mark Krikorian and Ken Cuccinelli used the same “Biden effect” phrasing in December 2020, again before Biden took office.
- On the border, don’t let Trump and his allies re-invent his record.
- As AV’s Douglas Rivlin recently highlighted, Trump “likes to pretend that the border was supposedly ‘secure’ during his presidency.” Still, under Trump throughout 2019 “border encounters were the highest in more than a decade, spiking to about triple the totals of when he took office. And in December 2020 … border encounters were the highest level for a December in more than two decades and had been rising for months…”
- It underscores the reality that migration is a global issue and that instead of working to overhaul our immigration system to promote order, safety, and legality, Republicans and other right-wing messengers would rather have it in crisis as a political attack message.
