Speaker Johnson, Gov. Abbott Talk Border Security in Texas

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at a briefing with Texas Department of Public Safety in Shelby Park on the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Jan. 3, 2024. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in the Lone Star State on March 28 to discuss the ongoing crisis at the southern border.

During the meeting, Mr. Abbott advocated for federal border security legislation to help stop illegal border crossings between ports of entry, the governor’s office said.

“Met with [Speaker Johnson] today at the Governor’s Mansion in Texas,” Mr. Abbott said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “We discussed the need to secure the border and to hold President Biden accountable for his disastrous policies. Until then, Texas will continue to hold the line.”

Mr. Johnson responded by saying that it was “great to see” Mr. Abbott and expressed his support for the governor’s actions to secure Texas’s border with Mexico.

“As Biden’s Department of Justice uses the judicial system to go after the state of Texas for attempting to safeguard its citizens, House Republicans stand firmly behind you and your commitment to protecting Texans from criminals, cartels, and traffickers,” the speaker wrote.

The Republicans’ meeting follows Mr. Johnson’s announcement that he will deliver the House’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on April 10.

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The Senate is expected to table the articles of impeachment, though some within the upper chamber have called for action.

“I believe the Senate needs to hold a trial,” Senate Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said last month.

“It is important that United States senators sit and hear, and the American people hear, about this incredible crisis at our southern border, and people need to be held accountable.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed that sentiment, holding that an impeachment trial to address the charges against Mr. Mayorkas “would be the best way forward.”

The House voted along party lines on Feb. 13 to impeach the secretary on two counts—his alleged “willful and systemic refusal to comply” with existing immigration law and “breach of public trust.”

In a March 28 letter, Mr. Johnson and Republican impeachment managers urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to schedule a trial “expeditiously.”

“We call upon you to fulfill your constitutional obligation to hold this trial,” they wrote. “The American people demand a secure border, an end to this crisis, and accountability for those responsible. To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve.”

Democrats have decried the impeachment as a political hit job. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), responding to his Republican colleagues’ letter, described it as a “phony political stunt” targeting Mr. Mayorkas.

“My response? Get lost,” he wrote on X.

The Homeland Security secretary is only the second presidential cabinet member ever to be impeached in the 236-year history of the United States. The first, President Ulysses Grant’s Secretary of War, George Belknap, resigned in 1876 but was later acquitted by the Senate.

Ryan Morgan, Mark Tapscott, and Joseph Lord contributed to this report.