The Senate confirmed Alejandro Mayorkas as the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, positioning him to carry out President Biden’s immigration agenda.
The vote was 56-43. Mayorkas, a veteran of the Obama administration, will be the first nonacting leader of the 250,000-person department in nearly two years.
A slew of Republicans voted against Mayorkas, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced Mayorkas in a vote last week, with only Rob Portman of Ohio and Mitt Romney of Utah joining Democrats to support the nominee.
Johnson, who led the committee for six years until last month, voted against Mayorkas over “issues” regarding a DHS inspector general report on Mayorkas’s behavior toward employees and the appearance of favorable treatment to Democratic politicians.
While at the DHS, the DHS Office of Inspector General accused Mayorkas of creating the appearance of “favoritism and special access” by ordering staff to fast-track visa applications that benefited Democratic sponsors, including former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, and Hillary Clinton’s brother, Anthony. He stepped down from his post in October 2016, months shy of Obama’s departure.
Portman said he would break with the party but that he had “concern” about the nominee’s “integrity lapses.” Romney said he spoke with Mayorkas in a private setting after the confirmation hearing on Jan. 19 and was comfortable supporting Mayorkas as a result of their conversation.
Conservative groups, such as the Heritage Foundation, a think tank, rallied opposition to Mayorkas.
“He does not deserve Senate confirmation to lead Homeland Security. Frankly, his record should foreclose confirmation even to a lower post,” McConnell said in a floor speech Tuesday morning. “The problem isn’t experience, not exactly. Mr. Mayorkas is all too familiar with the levers of power that control U.S. immigration law. The problem is when he’s chosen to pull those levers and for whose benefit.”
Mayorkas worked at the DHS for eight years during the Obama administration. He was described by a former DHS official in November as a “centrist,” but compared to the Trump White House’s immigration policies, Mayorkas’s strategies were liberal.
Mayorkas, 61, was the deputy secretary of the DHS from 2013 to 2016 and led the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2009 to 2013. The Senate unanimously confirmed him to his USCIS post in 2009.
He is expected to aid the White House in rescinding Trump-era immigration policies. Mayorkas oversaw the creation and implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an executive action that permits illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to apply for a reprieve from deportation and for the ability to work in the country. He told PBS in 2017 that he would support legislation that creates a path to citizenship for the more than 800,000 people who have been approved for DACA since 2013. He said the policy ought to be expanded to allow more people to be protected, and Biden has vowed to reinstate DACA by late April.
Mayorkas is a Cuban immigrant who was brought to the U.S. by his parents as a baby. His family arrived as refugees. During his eight years in the Obama administration, the annual cap on refugee admissions ranged from 70,000 to 90,000. Under Trump, the yearly limit dropped to between 18,000 and 55,000 per year.
Mayorkas reformed the USCIS, changing how it is structured and prioritizing fraud detection among visa and green card applicants. He created the agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate to ensure applicants were properly vetted and not bestowed visas or work documents that they were not entitled to. The focus on fraud has also been a leading priority among Trump appointees at USCIS, who launched numerous efforts to mitigate fraud.
Mayorkas graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree and earned his law degree from Loyola Law School. He worked three decades in the government, starting at the Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Central District of California and then as a federal prosecutor. He later moved to the private sector, working at O’Melveny & Myers and WilmerHale.
