WASHINGTON – Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher on Tuesday voted against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border — a decisive move that helped kill his party’s impeachment push.
Gallagher joined three other Republicans and every Democrat in rejecting impeachment. Republicans could only afford to lose two votes from their conference to pass the resolution through their slim majority, and the impeachment effort failed 214-216.
“Secretary Mayorkas has faithfully implemented President Biden’s open border policies and helped create the dangerous crisis at the southern border,” Gallagher said in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “But the proponents of impeachment failed to make the argument as to how his stunning incompetence meets the impeachment threshold Republicans outlined while defending former President Trump.”
He said impeaching the cabinet secretary would “only further pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”