Why is the highest-ranking Cuban American in government being impeached? Politics | Opinion
In an effort to normalize ex-President Donald Trump’s multitude of criminal indictments, felony charges and impeachments, Republicans are going after a public servant who is the highest-ranking Cuban American in the U.S. government.
Among those in the partisan mob constantly bad-mouthing and seeking to impeach Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas without evidence of impeachable offenses are Miami’s hyper-partisan and predictable Cuban-American members of Congress.
It’s shameful that they’re not willing to sit out at least this one Washington circus.
But, despite Mayorkas’ storied civil service career and professional accomplishments, they’ve never been fans.
Sen. Marco Rubio, who dropped immigration reform when the issue became politically inconvenient, didn’t vote in favor of Mayorkas’ confirmation and neither did Florida’s other senator, Rick Scott.
There only was one reason then, and one reason now, that instead of supporting and defending a fellow Cuban American, Miami’s Republicans are thrilled with the political impeachment process the GOP has undertaken.
Mayorkas is a Democrat.
Even when some other Republicans aren’t so keen on Congress misusing the constitutional power of checks and balances and making a mockery of American democracy, these Cuban Americans toe the Trump line at whatever cost.
Issue isn’t border security
Overreaching to support an ill-conceived, prejudice-fueled and undeserved punishment is a new low for U.S. Reps. Carlos Gimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar and Mario Diaz-Balart.
Leading the charge is Gimenez, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee scheduled to vote on impeachment articles next Tuesday. He has accused Mayorkas of “refusal to enforce our laws at the southern border” and “failure to protect our homeland” and every other Fox News “invasion” talking point about the border.
A ridiculous assessment of his job performance, especially since Mayorkas has been the target of harsh criticism by immigration advocates who think he has gone too far with deportations, new asylum policy and border enforcement.
“It is ironic that the overseer of the most massive deportation in the history of the United States is being investigated,” said María de los Angeles Torres, a professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Indeed, Miami Republicans don’t want anyone to remember, but Obama’s nickname among Latinos was “Deporter-in-Chief.”
Likewise, immigration advocacy organizations have spent the last couple of years sending press releases slamming Biden and Mayorkas for keeping some Trump policies and opening pathways to legal immigration that stymie the rights of arrivals at the southern border and by sea in Florida.
The case against Mayorkas, of course, isn’t about border security nor fixing the nation’s immigration system, a job that belongs to Congress.
It’s about ensuring border and asylum issues don’t get solved before the 2024 election with Trump as the nominee. In fact, if anyone is aiding and abetting the rush to the border, it’s Republicans pushing the line that Biden and Mayorkas are running an open border.
If someone were telling you there’s a November deadline to cash in before Trump is elected, what would any desperate immigrant looking for a way out of poverty, repression and violence do?
Miami support for Mayorkas
Gimenez & Co. may fool partisans, but not all Cuban Americans in South Florida believe their rhetoric.
Nine bipartisan and no-party-affiliation civic and business and civic leaders in Miami — who clearly see the political game Trump Republicans are playing with Mayorkas — issued a letter calling on the GOP to end the impeachment charade. Among the signers is Mike Fernandez, the Cuban American chairman of MBF Healthcare Partners and ex-Republican.
“When we look at Secretary Mayorkas, we see someone who embodies the dreams of our ancestors who could only imagine what their descendants would achieve,” the letter begins.
Then they balance Gimenez’s accusations with a needed dose of reality about Mayorkas’ challenges and job performance.
“Even while facing unprecedented levels of global migration, he has worked to modernize the Department of Homeland Security by tripling efforts to stop drugs like fentanyl from entering the country, expanding our nation’s Cybersecurity efforts, and launching new cross-government efforts targeting smugglers, gangs, and cartels,” the letter says.
Treat him like an ally, not an adversary,” they ask.
READ MORE: Group of Miami Cuban Americans urges GOP to drop effort to impeach Homeland secretary
But Republicans have created such a raucous atmosphere around the DHS Secretary, a member of Biden’s Cabinet that the most searched thing about Mayorkas on Google questions his immigration status: “Is Alejandro Mayorkas an American citizen?”
Yes, Americans are gullible enough to question if Biden has made a non-citizen one of his top officials. And, if Trump Republicans get their way abusing the system, Mayorkas might become the second Cabinet member impeached in the last 150 years.
READ MORE: Republicans try to ax Biden border official — in rare move used only once before
The first, William Worth Belknap, secretary of war under President Ulysses S. Grant, was impeached after he resigned when faced with accusations of corruption, his heroism during the Civil War forgotten.
Mayorkas, 64 and the son of a Holocaust survivor who brought his 1-year-old son and wife to the United States in 1960 after the Castro takeover, hasn’t done anything illegal that merits impeachment.
“He’s a good man,” Fernandez told me Thursday. He first met Mayorkas, who has made it a point to visit Miami to explain Biden immigration policy, at the White House during the Obama administration.
That Republican Cuban Americans in Congress aren’t willing to grant Mayorkas the respect he deserves is no reflection on his character. It’s a matter of politics being first and foremost in their agenda.
The only real issue with Mayorkas is that he’s not a Trump boot-licking Republican.
This story was originally published January 26, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
