Alejandro Mayorkas

Cuban-American lawyer and director of the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Service (USCIS).

Mayorkas is the son of a Romanian Jewish mother who emigrated to Cuba escaping the Holocaust and a father with Sephardic roots. He was born in Havana, Cuba and emigrated to the United States when he was 1 year old. After spending some time in Miami, the family settled in Los Angeles, where he graduated from Beverly Hills High School and the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Doctor of Laws degree from Loyola Law School.

He worked for several years as a private attorney and in 1988 he became the youngest federal prosecutor in the U.S. Before becoming director of USCIS, Mayorkas was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. This position involved prosecuting cases of public corruption, immigration, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

In 2001, Mayorkas was criticized by the House Committee on Government Reform for his participation in the commutation of the prison sentence of Carlos Vignali. Vignali had served 6 years of a 15-year sentence for his participation in a drug trafficking operation when he requested clemency from then-President Bill Clinton. This was one of 176 commutations and pardons granted by Clinton during his final hours as president.
It is said that Mayorkas called the White House to intercede for Vignali's release, apparently in response to a request from Vignali's father, a recognized Los Angeles businessman. Unknown to Mayorkas, Vignali's father had been suspected of drug trafficking, but there was never sufficient evidence to open a case against him. Mayorkas later apologized for his actions in the case, saying "It is reasonable to expect that anyone in my position should have made some inquiries to learn this information... I made a mistake."

In 2008, Mayorkas was elected to Barack Obama's Department of Justice review team.

Mayorkas was promoted as head of the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Service in 2009. He was nominated by Barack Obama in April 2009 and approved by the U.S. Senate in August of that same year. In 2011, USCIS became the world's largest immigration bureau, and Mayorkas had 18,000 employees under his supervision.

In June 2013, President Obama nominated Mayorkas as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Between 2014 and 2016, Mayorkas was promoted to number two in the Department of Homeland Security, where in addition to responding to threats of domestic and cyber attacks, he collaborated in the fight against Ebola and Zika outbreaks.

National Law Journal magazine has nominated Mayorkas as one of the 50 most influential lawyers of minorities in America.

Despite his history of fleeing Cuba, Mayorkas returned to the island in 2015 as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security of the U.S. to promote the historic normalization of relations initiated by the governments of Obama and Raúl Castro, which Trump has partially reversed.

Recently, Mayorkas led his law firm's team in addressing the various challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

As the culminating step in his career, President-elect Joe Biden has appointed Mayorkas to be the head of the Department of Homeland Security. In this regard, Biden stated "I am proud that, for the first time in history, the department is led by an immigrant, a Latino, who knows that we are a nation of laws and values."

In the brief speech he delivered after being introduced by Biden, Mayorkas indicated that it would be an honor for him to return to that department to support its more than 240,000 career employees and work "in partnership with the communities we serve."

"The Department of Homeland Security," he defined, "has the noble mission of helping us stay safe and continuing our proud history as a nation of welcome."