WASHINGTON (AP) – Senate confirmed Alexander Mayorkas as secretary of national security for President Joe Biden on Tuesday, the first Latino to take a central role in the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, a comprehensive cyber hack related to Russia and domestic extremism.
Mayorkas was confirmed with a vote of 56-43, the narrowest margin to date for a Biden cabinet candidate. The first immigrant to take the job, will lead a broad political reform of an agency that was accused of being deeply politicized while carrying out President Donald Trump’s initiatives on immigration and law enforcement.
Mayorkas is a former federal prosecutor who previously served as a senior DHS official. His nomination he was stopped in the Senate by Republicans who wanted to question him further about Biden’s plans for immigration policy. He also faced questions about his management of an investor visa program run by President Barack Obama.
Biden’s team hoped Mayorkas would be confirmed on January 20th. But Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley suspended before the inauguration, forcing a delay in the confirmation vote.
Democrats stood up to the delay.
“My friends on the other hand should not agree with Mr. Mayorkas on the finer points of all policies, but I am sure we can all agree that he knows the department, which understands the threats to the security of our nation and that it has what it takes to run DHS, ”Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when calling for a vote to lift a Republican filibuster in the nomination.
Even some Republican senators who had expressed reservations about the nomination admitted that DHS needed a confirmed secretary with the nation to face so many challenges, including the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. by Trump supporters who want to overthrow the election.
“I drove again for the National Guard to get here this morning. We have some real problems, ”said Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who voted to send the committee’s candidacy to the full Senate for a vote.
Portman was a half-dozen Republicans who eventually voted in favor of the nomination. Mayorkas was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
Mayorkas, whose family came to the United States from Cuba as refugees in 1960 and whose mother had 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 DHS deputy secretary.
“Mr. Mayorkas has a unique qualification to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security works to protect people of all backgrounds, all communities and all walks of life, ”said Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan and chairman of the Senate National Security Committee Senate Plan.
Under Trump, the department was often in turmoil and was plunged into controversy. The agency took heavy initiatives to enforce immigration, notoriously separating migrant children from their parents as part of a zero-tolerance campaign. in 2018. Mayorkas will work to reunite some families still separated as the head of a working group that Biden launched on Tuesday with an executive order.
During the summer, DHS was widely condemned, including some former secretaries, for deploying tactical agents without labels or insignia in the protests in Portland, Oregon, against the wishes of local authorities.
In September, a senior official filed a complaint against whistleblowers accusing National Security leaders of minimizing threat warnings that Trump might find himself unpleasant, including information about Russian electoral interference and the rising threat posed by white supremacists. And the president fired the respected head of the DHS cybersecurity agency in November for his defense of the integrity of the 2020 elections.
DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, who spent more than a year in office without Senate confirmation, and other senior officials turned routine press conferences into what for many seemed like campaign events. Trump, while claiming that relatively minor compliance actions were the main successes of the policy.
Mayorkas, which rejected a proposal to separate families when it served under Obama’s leadership, has pledged to “end inhuman and unfair treatment of immigrants,” but also to maintain the enforcement of borders.
“We are a nation of immigrants and we are also a nation of laws,” he said during his confirmation hearing.
Brandon Judd, chairman of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents U.S. Border Patrol agents and others, said in a recent interview with the Fox Business Network that migrant smugglers have stepped up their attempts to bring people, including children. , in the country due to a perception that the Biden administration will be less hostile. But he said he was “optimistic” about the election of the new president of Mayorkas.
“He has appointed a very good DHS secretary, a secretary who understands that policies affect border security,” he said.
Judd predicted that Mayorkas would be removed from some Trump policies, but would look for others that would “do the same” that was done under the previous administration. “And if it can do that, we can still maintain border security.”
At the confirmation hearing in Mayorkas, senators raised the 2015 report of the Office of the Inspector General criticizing it for its management of a program that granted residence to foreign investors. The investigation found that it created an appearance of favoritism and political interference by directing the approval of three projects backed by prominent Democrats, nullifying staff recommendations when he headed the immigration services agency under Obama’s leadership.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell denounced him on the Senate floor Tuesday, saying Mayorkas should stay even in a lower position for providing special treatment to prominent figures like Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham, and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. “Mr. Mayorkas did everything possible to turn U.S. citizenship and immigration services into an unethical favor factory for Democratic Party royalty, ”he said.
Mayorkas discussed the conclusion of the GI report and told senators he was intervening in decisions, on behalf of both Republicans and Democrats, to correct what he considered erroneous actions. “When a leader enters the federal service with the authority to fix problems, that leader has the responsibility to fix the problems, and that’s what I did,” he said.
Utah Sen. 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 private and was pleased that he considered his action a ” error “that would not repeat.
“We have just endured a president for 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,” Romney said.