‘Why Should You Not Be Impeached?’ Sen. Hawley Throws Down with DHS Sec. Mayorkas in Explosive Senate Hearing

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas received a harsh grilling on reports of migrant children being forced to work in what Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called “indentured servitude.”

During a hearing Tuesday on the DHS budget, Hawley read from a stunning New York Times report titled, As Migrant Children Were Put To Work, U.S. Ignored Warnings. “The White House and federal agencies were repeatedly alerted to signs of children at risk. The warnings were ignored or missed,” the Times reported.

“‘Thousands of children have ended up in punishing jobs across the country,'” Hawley read from the report. “Working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories, all in violation of child labor laws.'”

“You have in every stage facilitated this modern-day indentured servitude of minor children,” Hawley directed at Mayorkas. “Why should you not be impeached for this?”

Mayorkas said Hawley made “a number of factual inaccuracies.”

“I am reading you the facts from articles in the news and your usual modus operandi is what you’re doing again today, which is just to deny, deny, deny,” Hawley shot back. “Why have you permitted 340,000 children to come into this country unaccompanied? Why have you permitted thousands of them to be abused and exploited?”

Mayorkas retorted that “what we do is enforce the law.”

To which Hawley interjected, “You’re not!”

“If I can state what I’ve been trying to state,” Mayorkas said, “one of the significant policy decisions that we have made is to focus our work site enforcement investigative efforts, our criminal investigation efforts on unscrupulous employers that exploit individuals because of their vulnerabilities and that includes underage workers.”

“That is not what the New York Times investigation found,” Hawley shot back.

Watch the C-SPAN clip above or the entire hearing here.