Second time was the charm, by a single vote. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has succeeded in approving, by the slimmest of margins, its long-held ambition to impeach one of its great nemeses in the Biden Administration, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. It is, above all, a political gesture that will have no consequences for the head of U.S. immigration. The initiative must now be sent to the Senate, where it has no prospects of prospering, given the Democrats’ control of that institution.

A total of 214 Republican Representatives voted to punish Mayorkas on charges with willfully refusing to enforce border laws and breaching the public trust by making false statements to Congress. 213 others, the entire Democratic bench and the three Republicans who had joined them in last week’s vote, voted against.

This is the first time in 150 years that members of Congress have voted in favor of impeachment against a member of the government. The U.S. Constitution provides this option for cases of treason or equally serious crimes.

The vote was in doubt until the very last moment, given the snowstorm in the northeastern United States that has caused delays and cancellations of flights and trains. The Republicans only have a majority of seven representatives, and any absence, or change of opinion, could mean a failure. In the minds of all of them was last week’s fiasco, when a miscalculation of the “yeses” they were counting on led them to rush a vote that they ended up losing because three of their own voted against it.

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