The Homeland Security Committee will soon vote on articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, as House Republicans intensify their efforts to remove from power President Biden’s top border official.

On Tuesday, the committee is set to consider a resolution that accuses Mr. Mayorkas of violating immigration laws, falling short of his duties, misleading Congress, and obstructing its investigation. Approval would move the impeachment effort one step closer to a floor vote in the House in order to put Mr. Mayorkas on trial in the Senate and potentially remove him.

The articles of impeachment, unveiled by House Republicans on Sunday, marks an escalation of the heated battle at Capitol Hill over the worsening crisis at the nation’s Southern border. While Republicans in Congress charge that Mr. Mayorkas has violated the highest law of the land, critics see the inquiry as a politically motivated effort to take down a host of Biden administration immigration policies.

“These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment,” the chairman of the committee, Congressman Mark Green, said in a statement. “He has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress. He has breached the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight of his department.”

The first article targets Mr. Mayorkas for “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” arguing that he has failed to stop a sufficient number of migrants as required in the federal immigration code. The committee cites a September 2021 memo in which he guided his agency to limit immigration enforcement.

The second article of impeachment charges Mr. Mayorkas with “breach of the public trust,” accusing him of lying to Congress for previously describing the southern border as “secure,” “no less secure than it was previously,” “closed,” and under “operational control” by the Department of Homeland Security. 

The articles are an amendment to a resolution first introduced by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in November, when she alleged that Mr. Mayorkas has committed a crime by enabling the “ongoing invasion at our southern border.” Republicans have thrown multiple impeachment resolutions at Mr. Mayorkas since they assumed the House majority in 2023.

Critics say the current probe stems purely from policy differences and falls well below the Constitutional standard for the removal of federal officials — bribery, treason, and “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” 

Republicans on the committee have “ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a Sunday statement. The ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson, told the Sun early this month that the inquiry was “completely baseless” and “a political stunt.” 

“Unconstitutional” is how the White House describes the GOP effort. White House spokesman, Ian Sams, told NBC News that the targeting of Mr. Mayorkas by congressional Republicans mirrors their push to overturn the 2020 presidential election and impeach President Biden. Mr. Green asserted on Sunday, though, that Mr. Mayorkas’ “lawless behavior was exactly what the Framers gave us the impeachment power to remedy.” 

A floor vote on the resolution will take place “as soon as possible,” Mr. Johnson said Friday. This vote would mark only the second time in America’s history that the House has considered removing a Cabinet official, something not seen since the 1860s when President Andrew Johnson fired his Secretary of War, a Republican Reconstructionist, Edwin Stanton, which led to the House’s impeachment of Mr. Johnson himself.

The impeachment effort against Mr. Mayorkas would likely face obstacles in the Democrat-led Senate, as a two-thirds majority vote will be needed to remove him from office.

The development comes amid strong pushback from Speaker Johnson and House Republicans against an immigration reform and border security bill being negotiated in the Senate. He and his GOP colleagues earlier this month threatened to shut down the government unless the White House accepted their proposals to clamp down on the historic numbers of illegal crossings. 

Mr. Mayorkas and President Biden have paroled more than 1.5 million migrants over the last year, Senator Graham and Senator Thune said at a press conference on Capitol Hill earlier this month. That number compares to an average of less than 6,000 annual crossings between 2014 and 2020 under Presidents Obama and Trump.