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In 2019 – right before Democrats launched their baseless and partisan impeachment trial against President Trump – Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer urged the U.S. Senate to remember its “constitutional duty to act as judges and jurors in a potential trial.”

“We have a serious responsibility here in the Senate not to prejudge the case, but to examine the evidence impartially,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “We have a responsibility to let all the facts come out.”

Five years later, the Democrat leader has changed his tune. Now that we actually have a public office holder who deserves an impeachment trial – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – Schumer is doing everything he can to prevent a trial.

This should incense every Tennessean and American.

While repeatedly lying to Congress that our southern border is secure, Secretary Mayorkas has taken every step necessary to allow illegal immigrants to flood into our country. Last year, his agency deported less than 5 percent of all migrants encountered at the border, and in 2022, only 10 percent of all criminal illegals in the U.S. were arrested, let alone removed.

While reports indicate that roughly 30 percent of illegal immigrants crossing the border with children have no familial relationship to those children, Secretary Mayorkas also ended DNA testing at the border, which served as a critical tool during the Trump administration to stop child trafficking.

As a result of this open border agenda, more than 300 suspected terrorists, tens of thousands of migrants with criminal records, and more than 9.2 million illegal aliens – including 1.7 million known “gotaways” – have illegally crossed our border under Mayorkas’s watch.

No one has benefited more from the administration’s open border than the cartels, whose human trafficking business soared from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion by 2022. Now, cartel-smuggled fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, and more than 400,000 migrant children – many of them recycled and abused by the cartels – have been brought to America. Among them, tens of thousands have been forced into exploitative situations, including child labor and sex trafficking.

The evidence is overwhelming: Secretary Mayorkas has refused to enforce existing immigration law and uphold his constitutional duty of securing the homeland – and the American people are suffering the consequences.

Five years ago, Leader Schumer was all too happy to lead a partisan, baseless impeachment trial against President Trump. Yet today, when faced with a Secretary of Homeland Security who is unfit for office, Leader Schumer is trying to do something that has never been done before in U.S. history: dismiss impeachment charges without holding a trial.

Unfortunately for the Democrat leader, Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution is clear: The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. It is the Senate’s sole authority – and the Senate’s sole responsibility – to try these impeachment charges against Secretary Mayorkas.

By sidestepping the Constitution, Democrats are providing just the latest example of the Left’s two tiers of justice: one for Democrats and illegals and another for Republicans and President Trump.

Although Democrats control the Senate, my Republican colleagues and I will continue to fight to force a trial and hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable for helping create our nation’s border crisis. And if the Senate upholds its duty to hold a trial, I will vote to convict him.

(Marsha Blackburn represents Tennessee in the U.S. Senate.)