The Senate on Wednesday dismissed the impeachment case against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, voting along party lines before his trial got underway to sweep aside two charges accusing him of failing to enforce immigration laws and breaching the public trust.
By a vote of 51 to 48, with one senator voting “present,” the Senate ruled that the first charge was unconstitutional because it failed to meet the constitutional bar of a high crime or misdemeanor. Republicans united in opposition except for Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the lone “present” vote, while Democrats were unanimous in favor.
Ms. Murkowski joined her party in voting against dismissal of the second count on the same grounds; it fell along party lines on a 51-to-49 vote.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, moved to dismiss each charge, arguing that a cabinet member cannot be impeached and removed merely for carrying out the policies of the administration he serves.
“To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future,” Mr. Schumer said.
It took only about three hours for the Senate to dispense with the matter.
Republicans, for their part, warned that the dangerous precedent was the one that Democrats set by moving to skip an impeachment trial altogether, which they argued was a shirking of the Senate’s constitutional duty. They tried several times to delay the dismissal, failing on a series of party-line votes.
“Tabling articles of impeachment would be unprecedented in the history of the Senate — it’s as simple as that,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader.
Mr. McConnell did not mention that he voted in favor of an unsuccessful Republican effort in 2021 to dismiss a second impeachment case against former President Donald J. Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol before the Senate held a trial.
Republican senators were outraged at Mr. Schumer’s maneuvering. Some accused him of degrading the institution of the Senate and the Constitution itself. Others beat their desks as they called for a delay of the trial for two weeks, until next month or even until after the November election. They accused Mr. Mayorkas of lying to Congress and impeding Republican investigations.
Senator Mike Lee of Utah, visibly frustrated, rushed around the chamber trying to strategize with his fellow Republicans.
“The Mayorkas-Biden policies have led to the worst border crisis in U.S. history,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber.
Mr. Mayorkas is the first sitting cabinet member in United States history to be impeached. William Belknap, the secretary of war, was impeached in 1876, but he resigned just minutes before the scheduled vote.
Unlike Belknap, Mr. Mayorkas was never accused of corruption or of any crime other than carrying out immigration policies that Republicans oppose.
Democrats denounced the impeachment of Mr. Mayorkas as illegitimate and politicized. Legal experts have called the case against him groundless, arguing that the accusations against him do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses. But Republicans pushed forward anyway in what was essentially a bid to blame the secretary for President Biden’s immigration policies, which they contend have fueled a wave of illegal migration.
The votes came after Republicans spent much of the day railing against chaos at the U.S. border with Mexico and blaming the Biden administration for it. Under Mr. Biden, crossings at the southern border have reached record highs. Republicans insisted Mr. Schumer hold a trial in which House impeachment managers would lay out their accusations.
Failing to do so, Mr. McConnell said, “would mean running both from our fundamental responsibility and from the glaring truth of the record-breaking crisis at our southern border.”
On Wednesday, the Senate prepared to transform itself into a court of impeachment, with senators sworn in on the floor and required to sit at their desks to begin the proceeding. But they spent much of the afternoon haggling over whether to have the trial at all, and ultimately Democrats, who control the chamber, prevailed in their bid to shut down the proceeding before it got going.
After the first charge was dismissed, Mr. Lee rose on the floor and angrily demanded, “If this is not a high crime and misdemeanor, what is?”
After the impeachment articles were killed, Mr. Lee and fellow Republican senators took turns laying out the accusations against the cabinet secretary, but speaking to a nearly empty Senate floor.
In a news conference after the votes, Mr. Schumer said he had no regrets about setting a precedent that impeachment allegations could be dismissed without a trial. If future secretaries or presidents are impeached over policy disagreements, those accusations, too, should be dismissed, he said.
“The dangerous precedent is not the one that Republicans are talking about, but the one of letting impeachment take the place of policy disagreements,” Mr. Schumer said.
Mr. Mayorkas has spent months essentially ignoring the case and continuing to work. He negotiated a border security deal with both Senate Republicans and Democrats that fell apart after former Mr. Trump opposed it.
Mr. Mayorkas spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill talking about his agency’s budget request and calling on Congress to provide the department with more resources to enforce border laws, hire more personnel and pass the legislation he negotiated.
“Today’s decision by the Senate to reject House Republicans’ baseless attacks on Secretary Mayorkas proves definitively that there was no evidence or constitutional grounds to justify impeachment,” said Mia Ehrenberg, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.
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