Hawley to Mayorkas on Migrant Child Labor: 'Why Should You Not Be Impeached for This?' (April 18, 2023)

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tore into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over migrant children working grueling, illegal jobs across the country, then put the question to him point-blank: “Why should you not be impeached for this?”

Mayorkas shot back that Hawley was “misstating the facts so terribly.” The clash came on April 18, 2023, at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on the Department of Homeland Security’s budget. The video above shows the final minute of Hawley’s questioning. Quotes are from the official hearing transcript published by the Government Publishing Office [1].

”Do You Know What Is Happening to These Children?”

Hawley opened with a number. He asked Mayorkas how many unaccompanied children had crossed the border on his watch.

“Senator, I do not have that number at my disposal, but I can assure you that we are incredibly dedicated to the safety and security of those children,” Mayorkas answered.

“It does not appear so, based on what we are reading today in The New York Times,” Hawley replied. “The answer to my question, by the way, is 345,807. That is the number of unaccompanied children who have come across the border, on your watch” [1].

He then held up a chart of reported trafficking and abuse cases involving migrant children. “You can see a massive surge that begins to happen when? Oh, when you come to office, in 2021,” he said [1].

Cheerios at Midnight: The Times Investigation

Hawley read straight from a New York Times investigation into migrant children working in violation of child labor laws. He described a 15-year-old girl from Guatemala who packages Cheerios overnight at a factory, a 13-year-old forced to wash hotel sheets in Virginia, and children running milking machines in Vermont [1].

He quoted one person interviewed by the Times: “It is the new child labor. You are taking children from another country and putting them into indentured servitude.”

“Are you proud of this record?” Hawley asked.

“Senator, the horrific exploitation of children is something that we do not condone,” Mayorkas said. “You are incorrectly attributing it to our policies” [1].

Hawley entered two Times articles into the record: “Alone and exploited: Migrant children work brutal jobs across the U.S.,” from Feb. 25, 2023, and “As migrant children were put to work, U.S. ignored warnings,” from April 17, 2023 [1]. Fox News reported that the Times found administration staffers had ignored signs of “explosive” growth in child labor as more than 250,000 unaccompanied migrant children entered the country over two years [2].

”You Have Lost Track of Tens of Thousands of Them”

Hawley pinned the surge on the administration’s early decisions. “In your first year in office, first year, there was a 342 percent surge of unaccompanied children across the border,” he said. He cited a CBS News report that President Joe Biden’s election and his administration’s policy changes “led smugglers to tell migrant youth they had a better chance of being allowed to stay in the United States than they had under Trump” [1].

“Meanwhile, you have lost track of tens of thousands of them,” Hawley said. According to the senator, the Times reviewed data showing “the government could not reach more than 85,000 of these children.” He called the people receiving them “modern-day slave traders” [1].

Hawley said that in 2021 the administration changed its Title 42 border policy so unaccompanied children could enter the country and be sent to the interior, while under the previous administration “children were reunited with their families in their home country.” “You changed that, and as soon as you changed it, the numbers exploded. That is your responsibility,” he said [1].

“Quite a number of false statements, Senator,” Mayorkas answered.

“What is false about that statement?” Hawley pressed.

Mayorkas said the department had decided to focus its worksite and criminal investigations “on unscrupulous employers that exploit individuals because of their vulnerabilities, and that includes underage workers.” Hawley’s answer: “That is not what The New York Times investigation found” [1].

”Why Should You Not Be Impeached for This?”

Then came the moment in the video. Hawley accused the administration of loosening vetting so children could be handed to sponsors faster once the surge became “an optics crisis.”

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

“Senator, I look forward to discussing this issue further because you are misstating the facts so terribly,” Mayorkas said.

Hawley said he was reading facts from news reports and that Mayorkas’s “usual modus operandi” was to deny. In the video he says “deny, deny, deny”; the printed transcript shortens it to “just to deny” [1].

“Senator, what we do is we enforce the law,” Mayorkas said.

“You are not,” Hawley cut in.

“It is stunning to me, stunning, to hear you say that the prior administration reunited children with their parents,” Mayorkas said. Fox News described it as an apparent reference to the controversy surrounding child separation [2].

“Oh, I see. So this is their fault?” Hawley fired back. “Mr. Secretary, this is par for the course for you. You do it every time you appear before this Committee. You do it every time you appear before Congress. I, for one, am sick and tired of it.” He ended: “You should have resigned long ago, and if you cannot change course you should be removed from office” [1].

Republicans Pile On

Hawley was not alone that day. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., blasted Mayorkas at the same hearing and introduced a resolution calling for a vote of no confidence in him [1][2]. DHS answered by repeating its call for Congress to fix what it called a “broken” immigration system, Fox News reported [2].

Hawley’s office said afterward that if Mayorkas did not resign, he should be removed from office [3]. Three weeks later, at a White House briefing as Title 42 expired, Mayorkas was pressed on what illegal immigration costs taxpayers, in another exchange covered by HYGO News.

By the Numbers

30,557 to 144,834: Encounters with unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of federal data, a nearly fivefold jump [4].
345,807: Unaccompanied children who had crossed the border under Mayorkas, according to Hawley [1].
85,000: Children the government could not reach, according to the Times data Hawley cited [1].
214-213: The House vote that impeached Mayorkas on Feb. 13, 2024 [6].
51-48 and 51-49: The Senate votes that threw out the two articles of impeachment on April 17, 2024 [7][8].

What Happened Next

Hawley got his impeachment, from the House. Republicans’ first attempt failed 214-216 on Feb. 6, 2024 [5]. A week later, on Feb. 13, the House adopted H. Res. 863 and impeached Mayorkas 214-213 for high crimes and misdemeanors [6]. The Associated Press called him the first Cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years [9].

The Democrat-controlled Senate threw the case out a day after House impeachment managers delivered it. On April 17, 2024, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., raised points of order declaring both articles unconstitutional. The Senate agreed 51-48 on the first, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voting present, and 51-49 on the second, along party lines [7][8].

The children Hawley asked about are still a fight in Washington. In December 2025, Kristi Noem, then the Homeland Security secretary, said the Trump administration had located more than 127,000 migrant children “of the almost half-million children Biden facilitated coming into this country and getting trafficked” [10].