WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Senate confirmed Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday as President Joe Biden\u2019s homeland security secretary, the first Latino to fill a post that will have a central role in the government\u2019s response to the coronavirus pandemic, a sweeping Russia-linked cyber hack and domestic extremism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mayorkas was confirmed by a 56-43 vote, the narrowest margin yet for a Biden Cabinet nominee. The first immigrant to serve in the job, he is expected to lead a broad policy overhaul of an agency that was accused of being deeply politicized as it carried out President Donald Trump\u2019s initiatives on immigration and law enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mayorkas is a former federal prosecutor who previously served as a senior DHS official. His nomination was stalled in the Senate by Republicans who wanted to question him further on Biden\u2019s plans for immigration policy. He also faced questions over his management of an investor visa program under President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden\u2019s team had hoped to have Mayorkas confirmed by Jan. 20. But Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri placed a hold on the nomination on Jan. 19, forcing a delay in the confirmation vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democrats bristled at the delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy friends on the other side don\u2019t have to agree with Mr. Mayorkas on the finer points of every policy, but surely we can all agree that he knows the department, he understands the threats to our nation\u2019s security and has what it takes to lead DHS,\u201d Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said as he called for a vote to lift a Republican filibuster on the nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even some Republican senators who had expressed reservations about the nomination conceded DHS needed a confirmed secretary with the nation facing so many challenges, including the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI drove through the National Guard again to get here this morning. We\u2019ve got some real issues,\u201d Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said as he voted to send the nomination from the committee to the full Senate for the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mayorkas, whose family came to the U.S. from Cuba as refugees in 1960 and whose mother had fled the Holocaust, was a federal prosecutor in Southern California before he joined the Obama administration, first as head of the immigration services agency and then as deputy secretary of DHS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMr. Mayorkas is uniquely qualified to make sure the Department of Homeland Security is working to protect people from all backgrounds, all communities and all walks of life,\u201d Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said from the Senate floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under Trump, the department was frequently in turmoil and mired in controversy. The agency carried out heavy-handed immigration enforcement initiatives, most notoriously separating migrant children from their families as part of a zero-tolerance campaign in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the summer, the department was widely condemned, including by some former secretaries, for deploying tactical agents without nametags and insignia to protests in Portland, Oregon, against the wishes of local authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In September, a senior official filed a whistleblower complaint accusing Homeland Security leaders of downplaying threat warnings that Trump might find objectionable, including information about Russian election interference and the rising threat posed by white supremacists. And the president ousted the widely respected head of the DHS cybersecurity agency in November for his defense of the integrity of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, who spent more than a year in the post without Senate confirmation, and other senior officials turned routine news conferences into what to many appeared to be Trump campaign events, touting relatively minor enforcement actions as major policy achievements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mayorkas, who rejected a proposal to separate families when he served under Obama, has pledged to \u201cend the inhumane and unjust treatment of immigrants,\u201d but also to maintain border enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are a nation of immigrants, and we are also a nation of laws,\u201d he said during his confirmation hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brandon Judd, president 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 increased their attempts to bring people, including children, into the country because of a perception that the Biden administration will be less hostile. But he said he was \u201coptimistic\u201d about the new president\u2019s choice of Mayorkas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe has nominated a very good secretary for DHS, a secretary that understands that policies affect border security,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Judd predicted Mayorkas would get rid of some Trump policies but look for others that would \u201ceffectuate the same thing\u201d as was done under the previous administration. \u201cAnd if he can do that, then we can still maintain border security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Mayorkas\u2019 confirmation hearing, senators raised the 2015 report by the Office of Inspector General that criticized him for his management of a program that granted U.S. residency to foreign investors. The investigation found he created an appearance of favoritism and political interference by directing the approval of three projects backed by prominent Democrats, overruling staff recommendations when he ran the immigration services agency under Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell denounced him on the Senate floor Tuesday, saying Mayorkas should be kept from even a lower post for providing special treatment to prominent figures such as Hillary Rodham Clinton\u2019s brother, Anthony Rodham, and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. \u201cMr. Mayorkas did his best to turn U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services into an unethical favor factory for Democratic Party royalty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mayorkas disputed the IG report\u2019s conclusion and told senators he intervened in decisions, on behalf of both Republicans and Democrats, to correct what he considered wrong actions. \u201cWhen a leader enters federal service with the authority to fix problems, that leader has the responsibility to fix problems, and that is what I did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, another Republican member of the Homeland Security Committee who voted to send the nomination to the Senate floor for a vote, said he discussed the report at length with Mayorkas in private and was satisfied he considered his action an \u201cerror\u201d that he would not repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe just endured a president over four years that I\u2019ll say generously had a relaxed relationship with the truth and I think we want the highest level of integrity in positions of government,\u201d Romney said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mayorkas was confirmed by a 56-43 vote, the narrowest margin yet for a Biden Cabinet nominee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":54264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":48,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,11,36,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2241],"class_list":["post-25225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-global","category-newsletters","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"2BBW4UY3VNEJRF22LTYGMRKQ5I","arc_canonical_url":"\/management\/leadership\/2021\/02\/02\/senate-confirms-mayorkas-as-bidens-homeland-security-chief\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n