WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate confirmed Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday as secretary of internal security to President Joe Biden, the first Latino to hold a role that will play a central role in the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic., a comprehensive cyber hack linked to Russia and domestic extremism.
Mayorkas was confirmed by a 56-43 vote, the narrowest margin yet for a nominee from the Biden Office. The first immigrant to hold office, he will lead a broad political reform for an agency that has been accused of being deeply politicized while executing President Donald Trump’s initiatives on immigration and law enforcement.
Mayorkas is a former federal prosecutor who previously served as a senior DHS officer. Your appointment he was paralyzed in the Senate by Republicans who wanted to question him more about Biden’s plans for immigration policy. He also faced issues about his management of an investor visa program under President Barack Obama.
Biden’s team expected Mayorkas to be confirmed by 20 January. But Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri suspended before his inauguration, forcing a delay in the confirmation vote.
Democrats were irritated by the delay.
“My friends on the other side don’t have to agree with Mr. Mayorkas on the finer points of each policy, but we can certainly all agree that he knows the department, he understands the threats to our nation’s security and has what it takes to lead the DHS, ”said Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer when calling a vote to lift a Republican obstruction on the nomination.
Even some Republican senators who expressed reservations about the nomination admitted that DHS needed a confirmed secretary with the nation facing so many challenges, including the consequences of the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election
“I drove through the National Guard again to get here this morning. We have some real problems, ”said Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, as he voted to send the committee’s nomination to the Senate for a vote.
Portman was among half a dozen Republicans who voted in favor of the nomination. Mayorkas was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
Mayorkas, whose family came to Cuba from the United States as a refugee in 1960 and whose mother fled the Holocaust, was a federal prosecutor in southern California before joining the Obama administration, first as head of the immigration services agency and then as secretary-general. DHS deputy.
“Sir. Mayorkas is uniquely qualified to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security is working to protect people from all backgrounds, all communities and all walks of life,” said Sen. Gary Peters, Michigan Democrat and Committee Chair Senate Internal Security Committee, Senate Plenary.
Under Trump, the department was often in turmoil and mired in controversy. The agency has carried out heavy immigration enforcement initiatives, notably separating migrant children from their parents as part of a zero-tolerance campaign in 2018. Mayorkas will work to bring together some families still separated as head of a task force that Biden launched Tuesday with an executive order.
During the summer, DHS was widely condemned, including by some former secretaries, for employing tactical agents without badges and insignia in protests in Portland, Oregon, against the wishes of local authorities.
In September, a senior official filed a complaint accusing Homeland Security leaders of minimizing threat alerts that Trump may find questionable, including information about interference in the Russian elections and the growing threat posed by white supremacists. And the president dismissed the widely respected head of the cybersecurity agency DHS in November for his defense of the integrity of the 2020 elections.
Interim DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, who spent more than a year in office without confirmation from the Senate, and other senior officials transformed routine news conferences into what seemed to many to be Trump’s campaign events, announcing relatively minor enforcement actions as major political achievements.
Mayorkas, who rejected the proposal to separate families when he served in the Obama administration, promised to “end the inhuman and unfair treatment of immigrants”, but also maintain border control.
“We are a nation of immigrants and we are also a nation of laws,” he said during his confirmation hearing.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents US Border Patrol agents and others, said in a recent interview with Fox Business Network that migrant smugglers have increased their attempts to bring people, including children, into the country because of a perception that the Biden government will be less hostile. But he said he was “optimistic” about the choice of the new president of Mayorkas.
“He has appointed a very good secretary for DHS, a secretary who understands that policies affect border security,” he said.
Judd predicted that the Mayorkas would get rid of some Trump policies, but would look for others that would “do the same thing” that was done under the previous government. “And if he can do that, then we can still maintain security at the border.”
At the confirmation hearing in Mayorkas, the senators raised the 2015 report from the Office of the Inspector General that criticized him for managing a program that granted residency in the United States to foreign investors. The investigation found that he created an appearance of favoritism and political interference by directing the approval of three projects supported by prominent Democrats, overriding the team’s recommendations when he ran the immigration services agency under Obama.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell denounced him in the Senate floor on Tuesday, saying the Mayorkas should be kept even in a lower position for providing special treatment to prominent figures like Tony Rodham, brother of Hillary Clinton, and former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. “Sir. Mayorkas did his best to turn the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services into a factory of unethical favors for the royalty of the Democratic Party,” he said.
Mayorkas contested the conclusion of the IG report and told the senators that he intervened in the decisions, on behalf of Republicans and Democrats, to correct what he considered wrong actions. “When a leader enters the federal service with the authority to fix problems, that leader has a responsibility to fix the problems, and that’s what I did,” he said.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney, another Republican who voted in favor of the nomination, said during the confirmation hearing that he discussed the report at length with Mayorkas in particular and was pleased to consider his action a “mistake” he would not repeat.
“We have just endured a president for more than four years who, I will say, generously had a relaxed relationship with the truth, and I think we want the highest level of integrity in government positions,” said Romney.