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Immigration advocates celebrated the announcement of President-elect Joe Biden’s intention to appoint Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Mayorkas, who was previously deputy secretary of DHS under President Barack Obama, is the son of Cuban Jews who fled the Fidel Castro regime and arrived in the United States as refugees in 1960, less than a year after his birth. If confirmed, he would become the first immigrant and the first American Hispanic to lead the sprawling department, which, among its various responsibilities, oversees the U.S. immigration system and border security.
“This appointment is not only smart, it’s historic,” said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in a statement released Monday. “He will bring not only critical leadership, but a set of life experiences that will animate the work of the department to come.”
Johnson said that outside of Mayorkas’ personal background, he was reassured by his track record on immigration issues under the Obama administration, particularly his key role in creating the Deferred Action Program for Arrivals of children, or DACA, which protects some immigrants raised in the United States from deportation. Johnson said it was a sign of hope that the new Biden administration might even move beyond Biden’s pledge to roll back controversial immigration restrictions imposed under President Trump.
Prior to becoming Deputy Secretary of DHS in 2013, Mayorkas served as Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, where he worked on a number of policy initiatives, including the DACA. , which, in its heyday, protected an estimated 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States by their parents as young children.
Trump has sought to end the program.
“The news that Mayorkas will be named DHS secretary is another sign of hope for Dreamers and a signal that the Biden administration is ready to keep its commitments to Dreamers and strengthen America in the process,” said Candy Marshall. , president of TheDream. United States, which offers college scholarships to DACA recipients, sometimes referred to as “Dreamers”.
Erika Andiola, advocacy manager for RAICES, a non-profit organization that provides legal services to low-income immigrants, said in a statement: “We look forward to the immediate expansion of the DACA program and the dismantling of the machine. detention and deportation that was created. under Obama and expanded by Trump.
“Leading this department will not be an easy task, but we hope that as the first Latino and someone who has advocated for immigrant rights, he will change the leadership of DHS once and for all,” said Andiola.
News of Mayorkas’ upcoming appointment has also been hailed by organizations providing services to refugees and asylum seekers, whose access to protections in the United States has been restricted by the Trump administration. HIAS, an American Jewish nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid to refugees, released a statement on Monday congratulating Mayorkas, who serves on the organization’s board of directors. Not only is Mayorkas himself a refugee, but his mother, a Romanian Jew, fled Nazi persecution in Cuba, where she met Mayorkas’ father, a Cuban of Sephardic descent.
Mayorkas, who grew up in Los Angeles, spent 10 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California, where he specialized in prosecuting white-collar crimes, including the high-profile case of tax evasion and money laundering against “Hollywood Madame” Heidi Fleiss. In 1998, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton as US lawyer for the Central District of California, becoming at 38 the youngest US lawyer in the country.
In his first public statement following the announcement, Mayorkas already seemed to have a markedly different tone from the rotating cast of officials who have been installed (legally and otherwise) as head of DHS over the past four years.
“When I was very young, the United States provided my family and I with a refuge,” Mayorkas tweeted Monday afternoon. “Now I have been appointed to be the secretary of DHS and oversee the protection of all Americans and those fleeing persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”
While Trump’s DHS has largely focused on implementing the administration’s agenda to restrict immigration and strengthen law enforcement at the southern border, the department is also responsible for cybersecurity, the fight against terrorism and the prevention and response to disasters.
The website for WilmerHale, an international law firm where Mayorkas was recently employed as a litigator, states that Mayorkas is “currently leading WilmerHale’s COVID-19 Coronavirus Task Force”, citing his “leadership experience of the US Department of Homeland Security’s response to Ebola and Zika. The task force was created to help the company’s client companies deal with various workforce, worker safety and employment issues arising from the pandemic.
Democratic leaders of the House and Senate committees that oversee DHS have also expressed support for Biden’s choice.
“Our nation faces persistent threats old and new, including foreign and domestic terrorism, natural disasters, cyber attacks and now a pandemic,” said Gary Peters, D-Mich., The Leading Member Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “The Department of Homeland Security plays a vital role in combating these threats and strengthening our national security, and it needs highly skilled, experienced and dedicated leaders like Mr. Mayorkas, especially after years of chaos and mismanagement. ”
Representative Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., Who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, also hailed Mayorkas as “a seasoned leader and DHS veteran” whose experience “makes him uniquely qualified to rebuild DHS after years. neglect and being used as a political weapon by President Trump.
“Mr. Mayorkas will need our support with what will certainly be a full plate: from the rise of domestic terrorism and the coronavirus pandemic to cyberthreats to our infrastructure and the fallout from failed border and immigration policies of the Trump administration, “Thompson said in a statement.” I urge the Senate to act swiftly on this appointment as DHS has been without permanent leadership for over a year and a half. “
Since President Trump took office in 2017, five people have headed DHS, only two of whom have been confirmed by the Senate. In November, a federal judge ruled that the current acting secretary, Chad Wolf, had been illegally appointed to the post.
Although a press release from Biden’s transition team noted that Mayorkas had already been confirmed by the Senate for three previous positions, the Washington Post suggested that Mayorkas’ role in the development of DACA could hurt him with Republicans, who might also point to a 2015 DHS. Office of the Inspector General’s report that he “exerted undue influence” by helping some foreign investors in the EB-5 program, which offers employment visas and a easier access to a green card for foreign nationals making large investments in US companies.
The report alleged that as director of USCIS, Mayorkas had acted “outside the normal adjudication process” to intervene in three specific EB-5 cases at the behest of senior Democrats “in a way that benefited stakeholders. “. The cases involved companies linked to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe and Ed Rendell, former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania.
In 2013, as the Inspector General’s office investigated the allegations, Senate Republicans boycotted Mayorkas’ confirmation hearing for the DHS deputy secretary, arguing that it should not be confirmed until afterwards. end of investigation into his conduct.
According to ABC News, during these confirmation hearings, which took place without the Republican members, who then held a minority in the Senate, Mayorkas called the allegations “unequivocally false”. Mayorkas was confirmed as deputy director and he challenged the OIG’s findings when they were published in the report two years later.
Then Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a statement defending Mayorkas at the time, as did Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, who called him ” man of impeccable integrity “and maintained that” the Inspector General’s office wasted two and a half years on an investigation and couldn’t find anything substantial and had to say something. Fox News reported On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Biden’s transition said the OIG report did not reveal any wrongdoing by Mayorkas in legal terms and that his actions had helped create and preserve American jobs.
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