Less than two weeks after a violent crowd of Trump supporters invaded the United States Capitol, Alejandro Mayorkas, President-elect Joe Biden’s candidate for national security secretary, assured senators that, if confirmed, he “will face the threat of extremism. “and will prevent attacks in the future.
“I will do everything I can to ensure that the tragic loss of life, the assault on police authorities, the desecration of the building that stands out as one of the three pillars of our democracy and the terror felt by you, your colleagues and employees and all gifts will not happen again, ”Mayorkas told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee during its confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Mayorkas, who previously served as deputy secretary of the DHS under President Barack Obama, is the son of Cuban Jews who fled the Fidel Castro regime and arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1960, less than a year after his birth. If confirmed, he would become the first immigrant and first Hispanic American to lead the broad department.
Along with President Trump’s second impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives, the January 6 riots, which resulted in the deaths of five people, were a frequent topic at Mayorkas’s confirmation hearing. Held a day before Biden’s inauguration, the capital remains in a state of high security due to the threat of further violence from right-wing groups.
Mayorkas made it clear, however, that extremist domestic violence is just one item on a long list of current crises and emerging threats that DHS is tasked with addressing, including the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign terrorism and cyber threats, natural disasters and border security.
Committee members on both sides of the corridor seemed to agree on the urgent need to install a stable and qualified leader in DHS, who has been driven by a revolving door nominated by Trump for the past four years, only two of whom have been confirmed by the Senate. Chad Wolf, who most recently led the department as an interim, resigned after the attack on the Capitol, citing “recent events”, including a series of court decisions that concluded that Wolf was illegally appointed to that role.
“Given the threats to internal security that we face as a country … including the current increase in the level of threat here in our country’s capital, which we all experienced when we came to the Capitol this morning, having the right person to lead the Department of Homeland security could not be more important, ”said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.
But Portman and other Republicans expressed concern about Mayorkas’ plans to strengthen border security under the Biden government, as well as his previous conduct as director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Obama administration.
Specifically, Mayorkas was forced to answer a series of questions about a report from the 2015 DHS Inspector General’s Office, which claimed that, as director of the USCIS, he “exerted undue influence” in helping certain foreign investors in the EB-5 program, which offers employment visas and easier access to a green card for foreigners who make significant investments in American companies.
According to the report, Mayorkas acted “outside the normal adjudication process” to intervene in three specific EB-5 cases at the request of senior Democrats “in ways that have benefited stakeholders.” The cases involved companies with ties to the then Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe and Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania’s former Democratic governor.
As Portman noted in his opening statement, the inspector general’s office was investigating the charges against Mayorkas when he was appointed deputy secretary of homeland security in 2013, prompting Senate Republicans to boycott his confirmation hearings. “As a result, the appointment of Mr. Mayorkas was reported outside this Committee in a strict party line vote, without Republican support,” said Portman. “It was later confirmed by the Senate in the same way – party line, without Republican support.”
Mayorkas, who contested the allegations as “unequivocally false” during his 2013 confirmation hearings for the DHS deputy secretary and again when the OIG report was released in 2015, once again defended his conduct as director of USCIS at the hearing of Tuesday.
The EB-5 program, he said, “was broken”, arguing that, “for me, to walk away from the program in its entirety would be to abdicate my responsibility to solve the problem.”
Mayorkas insisted that the three cases highlighted in the inspector general’s report were “three of the hundreds of cases in which I got involved” at the request of members of Congress from “both sides of the corridor”.
“I disagree with the use of the term ‘intervened’,” said Mayorkas. “It is my job to get involved in the problems that an agency faces, get involved and solve them.”
Mayorkas cited as an example that during his time at the USCIS he also worked to resolve bureaucratic issues that blocked Guatemala’s international adoptions, thanks to a case brought to his attention by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
“The inspector general did not question the disposition of the cases in which I got involved because I studied law and followed the facts, and this is my Polar Star. It always has been, ”said Mayorkas. “Any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect.”
Mayorkas also faced doubts about Biden’s plan to propose a comprehensive immigration reform project as early as Wednesday,
“We are a nation of immigrants and we are also a nation of laws. And I intend to apply the law in carrying out my responsibilities as DHS secretary, ”said Mayorkas in response to a question from Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, about how he intends to deal with the arrival of a caravan of Honduran migrants. making its way to the US-Mexico border. The caravan in question was dismantled by Guatemalan security forces on Monday.
Romney was one of several Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley, from Missouri, and Senator James Lankford, from Oklahoma, who questioned the Mayorkas specifically about the latest caravan of migrants and, more broadly, whether he intends to apply the laws of US immigration policy in place.
In expressing support for Biden’s plan to present “an immigration reform project that once and for all fixes what, I think we can all agree, is a broken immigration system”, Mayorkas also made it clear that he intends to legally execute the other president-elect promised actions, such as stopping wall construction along the southern border. He has also repeatedly stated that he does not support the abolition of the ICE and cited his endorsement by law enforcement organizations, including the pro-Trump National Border Patrol Council, the union representing the United States Border Patrol agents.
Hawley, at least, was not impressed. The Missouri Republican, who has been the subject of a bipartisan reaction for promoting the false allegations of electoral fraud that fueled the pro-Trump rebels who invaded the Capitol earlier this month, declared Tuesday afternoon that he will block a procedural move to circumvent the committee’s consideration of the Mayorkas nomination, probably delaying confirmation of a new DHS secretary until after Biden’s inauguration.
“We are facing unprecedented challenges and threats to our national security, and our country urgently needs a confirmed Home Security Secretary on the first day to protect the American people,” said Sean Savett, spokesman for the Biden transition team, in response to Hawley’s move to block a quick confirmation vote for Mayorkas. “The Senate held swift confirmation votes for the candidate for the DHS Secretary in 2009 and 2017 to get them started on the first day for good reason. Senator Hawley’s threat to interrupt historical practice and try to leave this vital position vague is dangerous, especially in this time of overlapping crises, when there is not a moment to lose. “
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