Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP Images
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) walks through the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, February 6, 2024. Gallagher’s was the deciding vote against impeaching Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas survived a House impeachment effort last night by the thinnest possible margin, after three defections from Republicans deadlocked the vote. (Rep. Blake Moore of Utah later switched his vote from yes to no so the GOP could reconsider the motion in the future.) Two of the Republican no votes were expected and announced before the vote: Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, who is retiring, and Tom McClintock of California, a constitutionalist who issued a ten-page memo outlining his views.
What was more surprising, and ultimately what sunk the impeachment (for now), was the opposition of Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin. That was not announced beforehand, though Gallagher did speak before a closed Republican caucus about his misgivings. Colleagues argued with Gallagher to try to reverse his vote on the House floor, to no avail.
Officially, Gallagher’s argument was similar to McClintock’s: Impeachment should be reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors, not carrying out a policy that members of Congress dislike. In a statement, Gallagher compared the Mayorkas impeachment to the two impeachments of President Trump, claiming that Republicans shouldn’t emulate a “rushed, hyperpartisan process that lowered the bar for what constitutes an impeachable offense.” Following this standard, Gallagher said, “will set a dangerous new precedent that will be weaponized against future Republican administrations.”
But there may be another dimension to this drama. Mayorkas just got the ball rolling on an action plan related to one of Gallagher’s biggest priorities, related to his work on the congressional Select Committee on China.
On January 17, Gallagher and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Raja Krishnamoorthi, wrote to Mayorkas seeking stronger enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which passed on a bipartisan basis in 2022. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi expressed frustration over lack of enforcement of the law, leading to goods made with forced labor entering the country. They cite tactics to get around Customs and Border Protection (CBP), including transfer of forced laborers from the Xinxiang region to other areas of China, transshipment of goods from Xinxiang to third countries, and widespread use of the de minimis loophole for tax- and inspection-free shipping from China to consumers in the U.S.
I wrote about the de minimis loophole a couple of weeks ago. Roughly 30 percent of the nearly one billion de minimis shipments estimated to be sent last year come from two Chinese fast-fashion companies, Shein and Temu, which can get their goods directly to consumers from China without inspection and possibly out of compliance with UFLPA because of the use of cotton originated in Xinxiang. Eight textile plants in the U.S., mostly making components like yarn, have closed since last September because of the increase in cheap de minimis shipments from China. Gallagher’s China committee has released a report on Shein and Temu.
Last week, the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) met with Mayorkas about the de minimis loophole and UFLPA noncompliance. Mayorkas agreed to increase oversight and prosecution of “illegal customs practices that harm the American textile industry.” He asked CBP, along with Homeland Security Investigations and other agencies, to create a “comprehensive enforcement action plan” within 30 days, including whether DHS could use existing law to “solve the core issues.” That probably relates to NCTO’s contention that the Biden administration could simply stop certain de minimis shipments from China if they determined them to be facilitating violations of U.S. law or no longer of minimal value. The Treasury Department provided a comment to the Prospect that they were “working on ways to exercise our existing authority to make sure the de minimis exemption doesn’t provide a means to evasion.”
Mayorkas claimed in a readout that CBP had increased physical inspections and verification visits in recent weeks, was boosting its isotopic testing capacity for goods suspected of using forced labor, and identifying bad actors to place on the UFLPA Entity List for using forced labor. “DHS will use all the tools at its disposal,” Mayorkas said in a statement, “in order to protect the integrity of our markets, hold perpetrators accountable, and safeguard the American textile industry.” Though it’s really only at the beginning of the effort, NCTO was pleased with the response.
Gallagher did not reference Mayorkas’s de minimis enforcement plans at all when explaining his vote against the impeachment. But this is an area of critical interest for him and his committee, where brand-new developments are under way. Mayorkas’s action plan items align with Gallagher’s requests from just a few weeks ago. Gallagher wants some tangible victories from his chairmanship of the China committee, which was just established this session. It’s not unreasonable to suggest it played a role.
This does not fully clear Mayorkas. If Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who was out for treatment for his rare cancer on Tuesday, returns, then Republicans would have enough votes. But next Tuesday’s special election to replace the expelled George Santos in New York could tip to the Democrats, which would nullify that advantage from Scalise. So Gallagher may have saved Mayorkas from becoming the first impeached Cabinet official since 1876. And products made with forced labor may be a bit harder to get into the U.S., besides.
