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WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas to become U.S. secretary of homeland security, Biden’s transition team said Monday, entrusting the Cuban immigrant to help reverse the hardline immigration policies of outgoing President Donald Trump.
Mayorkas, a former federal prosecutor in California, served as an undersecretary in the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during Barack Obama’s presidency when Biden was vice president. Mayorkas became one of Biden’s first Cabinet picks as the former Democratic vice president prepares to take office on January 20.
If confirmed by the Senate, Mayorkas would become the first Latino and foreign-born leader of the sprawling department created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
DHS, with approximately 240,000 employees, is responsible for border security, immigration law enforcement, cyber security, disaster preparedness and relief, and encompasses the United States Coast Guard and the Secret Service. , among other wallets.
Mayorkas, 60, was born in Havana and came to the United States as a political refugee when he was about a year old with his family, fleeing the communist-ruled island nation, moving first to Florida and then to California. He is currently a partner at the WilmerHale Law Firm.
“When I was very young, America provided my family and me with a place of refuge,” Mayorkas wrote on Twitter after the announcement. “Now, I have been nominated 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.”
Biden has vowed to undo many of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies. The hundreds of planned changes could take months or years to implement. Some pro-immigrant activists favored Mayorkas for the DHS role.
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On the first day of his presidency, Biden intends to rescind Trump’s travel bans targeting people from 13 countries, most of them Muslim or African-majority nations. He also plans to send immigration legislation to Congress that would include a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.
Biden also plans to revitalize the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program implemented in 2012 by Obama that offered protections to so-called Dreamers, hundreds of thousands of immigrants living illegally in the United States after entering as children. Trump tried to rescind the program but was blocked by the Supreme Court in June.
Former colleagues praised Mayorkas as a talented manager with knowledge of DHS and experience in both law enforcement and immigration.
“It’s a kind of law enforcement, but it has a very deep and rich humanitarian core,” said Seth Stodder, a former DHS official during the Obama administration who worked on border, immigration and trade policy.
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Mayorkas joined the Obama administration in 2009 as director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency.
In that role, he oversaw the implementation of DACA, which was up and running 60 days after its announcement. The program protected eligible immigrants from deportation and provided them with work permits. Mayorkas overcame logistical and legal hurdles to meet an ambitious implementation deadline, according to Stephen Legomsky, the lead attorney for USCIS at the time.
“We were tied in knots for 60 days and Ali somehow succeeded,” Legomsky said.
A 2015 DHS inspector general report found that Mayorkas had intervened in cases involving certain “politically powerful” individuals involved in an investor visa program, giving the perception that he had provided preferential treatment to those individuals and related businesses.
The cases involved prominent Democrats, including Anthony Rodham, the brother of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
