The House had initially launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, but instead turned its attention to Mr Mayorkas after Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pushed the debate forward following the panel’s months-long investigation.
The charges against Mr Mayorkas would next go to the Senate for a trial, but neither Democratic nor Republican senators have shown interest in the matter and it may be indefinitely shelved to a committee.
Border security has shot to the top of campaign issues, with Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insisting he will launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if he retakes the White House.
Various House Republicans have prepared legislation to begin deporting migrants who were temporarily allowed into the US under the Biden administration’s policies, many as they await adjudication of asylum claims.
“We have no choice,” Mr Trump said in stark language at a weekend rally in South Carolina.
At the same time, Mr Johnson rejected a bipartisan Senate border security package but has been unable to advance Republicans’ own proposal which is a nonstarter in the Senate.
Three Republican representatives broke ranks last week over the Mr Mayorkas impeachment, which several leading conservative scholars have dismissed as unwarranted and a waste of time. With a 219-212 majority, Mr Johnson had few votes to spare.
Mr Mayorkas is not the only Biden administration official the House Republicans want to impeach. They have filed legislation to impeach a long list including Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Never before has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached, and it was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned before the vote.
Mr Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, put the border crisis squarely on Congress for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration.
“There is no question that we have a challenge, a crisis at the border,” Mr Mayorkas said over the weekend on NBC. “And there is no question that Congress needs to fix it.”
Mr Johnson and the Republicans have pushed back, arguing that the Biden administration could take executive actions, as Mr Trump did, to stop the number of crossings — though the courts have questioned and turned back some of those efforts.
“We always explore what options are available to us that are permissible under the law,” Mr Mayorkas said.