(NewsNation) — The House of Representatives failed Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas after a small group of Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against the resolution.
Prior to the vote, two Republicans, Colorado Rep. Ken Buck and Rep. Tom McClintock of California, said they would vote against Mayorkas’ impeachment, arguing he should not be removed for carrying out the Biden administration’s migration and border policy.
The pair were joined by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., resulting in a 215-215 tie. A fourth Republican changed their vote to “no” in order to allow the party to bring the impeachment articles back up at a later date, resulting in a final 214-216 tally.
The vote is a stunning defeat for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who earlier in the day said he spoke privately with at least two Republican holdouts to try to sway their vote.
“It’s an extreme measure,” said Johnson, R-La. “But extreme times call for extreme measures.”
Johnson’s office said Republicans would bring the impeachment articles back up for a vote once they have the necessary votes.
The vote appears to have been sunk by the last-minute surprise appearance of Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who had surgery scheduled for Tuesday. Instead, he was brought into the House chamber in a wheelchair.
“They played a good game,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., reportedly said of the Democrats’ maneuver.
Republicans say Mayorkas is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that amount to a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” on immigration and a “breach of the public trust.”
Tennessee Rep. Mark Green, the GOP chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday that Mayorkas has “refused to comply with the job,” so he no longer deserves to keep it.
Democrats, meanwhile, have said the impeachment proceedings are politically motivated and a waste of time.
In a Sunday statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the GOP doesn’t want to fix the problem at the border — “they want to campaign on it.”
“That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” the statement said.
Mayorkas himself put out a scathing memo, responding to the GOP’s allegations for the first time and saying he’s going to continue to do his job.
White House spokesman Ian Sams called Tuesday’s vote a stunt.
“House Republicans ought to realize that extreme political stunts like this are a waste of time, and instead join the President, Secretary Mayorkas, and Republicans and Democrats who want to work together to deliver real solutions that actually strengthen border security,” he said in a statement.
President Joe Biden, in a statement the day before the vote, said impeaching Mayorkas would trivialize the solemn constitutional power and invite more partisan abuse of this authority in the future.
Should the impeachment resolution eventually pass, the Senate would hold a trial, with a two-thirds vote needed for conviction. This could be a challenge in the Democratic-run Senate, especially since members could refer the matter to a committee for its own investigation, delaying immediate action.
A Cabinet secretary has not faced impeachment charges since 1876. Secretary of War William Belknap ended up resigning just before the vote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
