By Caitlin Dickson
Reporter
Yahoo! News
Immigration advocates celebrated the announcement that President-elect Joe Biden intends to nominate Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Mayorkas, who previously served as deputy secretary of DHS under President Barack Obama, is the son of Cuban Jews who fled Fidel Castro’s regime and arrived in the United States as refugees in 1960, less than a year after he was born. If confirmed, he would become the first immigrant and first Hispanic American to lead the sprawling department, which, among its various responsibilities, oversees the U.S. immigration system and border security.
“This nomination is not only smart, it is historic,” Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said in a statement issued Monday. “He will not only bring critical leadership but a set of life experiences that will animate the department’s work ahead.”
Johnson said that apart from Mayorkas’s personal background, he was reassured by his record on immigration issues during the Obama administration, especially his key role in creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which protects certain immigrants who were raised in the U.S. from deportation. Johnson said this was a hopeful sign that the incoming Biden administration may go even beyond Biden’s pledge to reverse the controversial immigration restrictions imposed under President Trump.
Prior to becoming deputy secretary of DHS in 2013, Mayorkas served as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, where he worked on a number of policy initiatives, including DACA, which, at its peak, provided protection from deportation for roughly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents as young children.
Trump has sought to end the program.
“The news that Mayorkas will be nominated as DHS secretary is another hopeful sign for Dreamers and a signal that the Biden administration is ready to deliver on its commitments for Dreamers and to strengthen America in the process,” said Candy Marshall, president of TheDream.US, which provides college scholarships to DACA recipients, sometimes known as “Dreamers.”
Erika Andiola, chief advocacy officer for RAICES, a nonprofit that provides legal services to low-income immigrants, said in a statement, “We look forward to the immediate expansion of the DACA program and the dismantling of the detention and deportation machine that was created under Obama and expanded by Trump.
“Leading this department will be no easy task, but we hope that as the first Latino and someone who has advocated for immigrant rights, he will change the direction of DHS once and for all,” said Andiola.