As the Biden administration and Democrats seek to avoid accountability for the crisis created and left to rage at the U.S.-Mexico border, Senate Republicans are demanding that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) hold a full impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — as required by constitutional duty and expected based on Senate precedent.
In a letter to Sen. Schumer on Thursday, 43 Republicans in the upper chamber wrote "to demand that the Senate uphold its constitutional responsibility to properly adjudicate the House of Representatives’ impeachment" of Biden's DHS secretary.
As Townhall reported earlier this week, the delivery of the House's approved impeachment articles was delayed to next week — Tuesday, as of now — to make it more difficult for Schumer and Senate Democrats to scuttle a trial. Still, it remains unclear that Schumer will do the duty he and his fellow senators are bound to do.
Emphasizing that "Secretary Mayorkas has abdicated control of America’s borders to a magnitude unparalleled in our Nation’s history," senators write in their letter that the crisis "has become a nightmare for the American people" as illegal alien encounters along the southwest border in FY 2023 have spiked a "startling" 440 percent compared to FY 2020.
More from the Senate Republicans' letter:
The lives of innocent young Americans are cut short through the scourge of fentanyl that flows freely across our borders. Children are run out of their schools and playgrounds while priority is given to host migrants. Police officers are assaulted in our streets. Violent gang members and criminals are ferried to our cities on the government dime, where they amass stores of weapons and commit murder and mass robberies. ISIS terrorists grow smart to the situation at the border—and send their sympathizers to our shores.
"Our constitutional duty requires the Senate to hold a trial," the upper chamber Republicans remind Schumer. "In every previous congressional impeachment of the past 227 years, Congress has been faithful to the process set out by the framers."
"Never before has the Senate abandoned this duty, even when certain members believed the basis for impeachment was tenuous at best," the letter continues. "Two-hundred and twenty-seven years of Senate history mandates a trial." Yet, as Democrats have proven before, norms and precedent are not something they respect.
From using the "nuclear option" on judicial nominations to repeated attempts to nuke the legislative filibuster and calls to "pack" the Supreme Court, Senate Dems have not proven themselves above allowing partisan politics to upend the way the "greatest deliberative body in the world" conducts business.
Invoking Alexander Hamilton's description of the Senate's duty to hold impeachment trials as an "important trust," the Republican senators remind Schumer that the framers of our Constitution "expected that the SEnate would be 'endowed with so eminent a portion of fortitude' for execution of 'so difficult a task.' This was high praise and a solemn responsibility placed on this body by those who fought to earn our independence as a nation," senators underscore in the letter.
"Since 1797, twenty-one individuals have been impeached by the House of Representatives," the letter further recounts. "Trials were held in every single instance, except once when an impeached judge resigned from office before trial commenced. Absent Secretary Mayorkas’ immediate resignation, this impeachment should remain faithful to Senatorial precedent," senators write.
In addition to the constitutional duty and Senate precedent, the Republicans emphasize that the "American people deserve to hear the evidence through a Senate trial in the Court of Impeachment."