Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) has filed articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for presiding “over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement” as the head of the agency.

On Tuesday, Biggs filed the articles of impeachment, accusing Mayorkas of being “a threat to the sovereignty and security of our nation” by putting the United States “more in danger today than when he began serving as Secretary” in a statement.

In article one of the impeachment, Biggs alleges that Mayorkas is violating his oath by “failing to maintain operational control of the border and releasing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the interior of the United States.”

“Secretary Mayorkas has willfully refused to maintain operational control of the border as required by the Secure Fence Act of 2006,” Biggs continues in article one:

Secretary Mayorkas has willfully violated the Immigration and Nationality Act by releasing illegal aliens into the interior of the United States despite the plain language of the Act, which requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to detain inadmissible aliens arriving into the United States or aliens who are present in the United States without inspection while such aliens are processed under expedited removal or placed in removal proceedings. The Secretary of Homeland Security does not have the option of simply releasing those aliens into the interior of the United States. [Emphasis added]

Secretary Mayorkas reinstituted the catch and release policies of the Obama administration and has even released inadmissible aliens into the interior of the United States without issuing the aliens notices to appear for immigration proceedings. He is relying on the aliens to report on their own volition to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices to be placed into removal proceedings, a practice that violates the law and defies logic and common sense. Department of Homeland Security data show that over 80 percent of these released illegal aliens are failing to report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. [Emphasis added]

On May 13, 2021, Secretary Mayorkas admitted during testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that U.S. Customs and Border Protection was releasing inadmissible aliens, whom the Department of Homeland Security is required to detain, into the interior of the United States. This was an admission that under his direction, the Department of Homeland Security is violating the law. [Emphasis added]

In article two of the impeachment, Biggs writes that Mayorkas has “placed departmental personnel and American citizens at risk of exposure to and contracting COVID-19, by refusing to take necessary steps to prevent potentially contagious illegal aliens from entering the United States.”

“Instead of detaining aliens as required by law, under Secretary Mayorkas’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security has released and transported hundreds of thousands of aliens into the interior of the United States without properly screening the aliens for COVID-19 to ensure that the aliens would not spread COVID-19,” Biggs writes:

In many other cases, aliens known by the Department of Homeland Security to have COVID-19 were released into the interior of the United States. These actions have subjected the American people to unnecessary and avoidable risks and have strained border communities’ limited health services and resources. [Emphasis added]

Read the full articles of impeachment here:

Biggs to Mayorkas by John Binder

Since President Joe Biden took office, illegal immigration to the U.S. has skyrocketed — coinciding with his canceling of border wall construction, ending the “Remain in Mexico” program, eliminating cooperative asylum agreements with Central America, and restarting of Catch and Release policies.

Analysis last month projects that as a result of Biden’s lax enforcement of federal immigration law, nearly 1.7 million illegal aliens are expected to be encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2021. This does not include the hundreds of thousands who will successfully cross into the U.S., undetected by federal immigration officials.

Much of the enticement for migrants arriving to the souther border from around the world is the administration’s running of an expansive Catch and Release operation where border crossers and illegal aliens are regularly released into the U.S. interior.

Last week, DHS officials admitted in a court brief that coronavirus-positive border crossers arriving at the southern border have “increased significantly” in recent months and caused “extremely worrisome” conditions at detention facilities that are far beyond capacity limits.

The latest data reveals that the Biden administration has released about 173,000 border crossers into the U.S. interior since he took office in late January. In addition, just in the month of July, nearly 15,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) were released to sponsors across the U.S. Another 16,000 UACs remain in federal custody until they are released to sponsors.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.