Alejandro Mayorkas

Extracted Attributes

• Award

  Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Faithful Service

• Education

  B.A. in History from University of California, Berkeley (1981); J.D. from Loyola Law School (1985)

• Ethnicity

  Cuban Jew (Sephardi and Ashkenazi descent)

• Full Name

  Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas

• Nationality

  United States

• Date of Birth

  1959-11-24

• Place of Birth

  Havana, Cuba

• Border Gotaways

  Estimated 1,500,000 individuals who evaded capture during tenure

• Political Party

  Democratic Party

• Border Encounters

  Approximately 10,000,000 nationwide encounters during tenure as Secretary

Timeline

• Born in Havana, Cuba. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1959-11-24

• Emigrated from Cuba to Miami, Florida, as a refugee following the Cuban Revolution. (Source: Britannica)

  1960-01-01

• Graduated with honors in History from the University of California, Berkeley. (Source: Britannica)

  1981-05-01

• Earned J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. (Source: Britannica)

  1985-05-01

• Appointed by Bill Clinton as U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. (Source: Ballotpedia)

  1998-12-21

• Began tenure as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under Barack Obama. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2009-08-12

• Led humanitarian efforts to rescue orphaned children following the earthquake in Haiti. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2010-01-12

• Sworn in as the 6th Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2013-12-23

• Nominated by President-elect Joe Biden for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2020-11-23

• Confirmed by the Senate (56-43) and sworn in as the 7th Secretary of Homeland Security. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2021-02-02

• Impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for alleged dereliction of duty regarding border enforcement. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2024-02-13

• Impeachment charges dismissed by the U.S. Senate without a trial. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2024-04-17

Alejandro Mayorkas

Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas (born November 24, 1959) is an American attorney and government official who was the seventh United States Secretary of Homeland Security, serving from 2021 until 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, Mayorkas previously served as the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2009 to 2013, and the sixth deputy secretary of homeland security from 2013 to 2016. Mayorkas was born in Havana, Cuba. Shortly after the Cuban Revolution, his family fled to Florida and later settled in California. He graduated from UC Berkeley in history with honors, subsequently earning his J.D. from Loyola Marymount University. After law school, Mayorkas worked as an assistant United States attorney and as the United States attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2001. In 2009, Mayorkas was a member of the presidential transition team for Barack Obama, leading the team responsible for the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division. He was appointed by President Obama as the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. As USCIS director, Mayorkas implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process in 60 days. He led U.S. government efforts to rescue orphaned children following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and led the advancement of a crime victims unit that, for the first time, made it possible for the agency to issue the statutory maximum number of visas to victims of crime. On November 23, 2020, Mayorkas was nominated by President-elect Joe Biden for the position of secretary of homeland security. Mayorkas's nomination received the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police and several former secretaries. He was confirmed by the Senate on a 56–43 vote on February 2, 2021, facing significant Republican opposition over his stance on immigration, particularly his support for halting border wall construction and advocating for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris the same day. Since Mayorkas became Secretary of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported about 10 million nationwide encounters with removable noncitizens across the country. This includes a record 2.2 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, the highest in history. Additionally, 1.5 million "gotaways"—people who evaded capture—were estimated to have entered the U.S. during this period. Republicans have made sharp criticism of Mayorkas' policies and tenure, leading to his impeachment for dereliction of duty in a narrow and largely partisan 214–213 vote by the House of Representatives in 2024. This came after an unsuccessful impeachment vote of Mayorkas one week prior. Mayorkas is the first cabinet member to be impeached since William Belknap in 1876. The Senate voted 51–49 to dismiss the impeachment charges on April 17, ending the impeachment without a trial.

Web Search Results

• Alejandro Mayorkas

  Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas (born November 24, 1959) is an American attorney and government official who was the seventh United States Secretary of Homeland Security, serving from 2021 until 2025. A member of the Democratic Party "Democratic Party (United States)"), Mayorkas previously served as the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2009 to 2013, and the sixth deputy secretary of homeland security from 2013 to 2016. [...] ## Early life and education [edit] Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas was born in Havana, Cuba, on November 24, 1959. When he was one year old, his parents fled with him and his sister to the United States in 1960 as refugees, following the Cuban Revolution. He lived in Miami, Florida, before his family moved to Los Angeles, California, where he was raised for the remainder of his youth. Mayorkas grew up in Beverly Hills and attended Beverly Hills High School. His father, Charles R. "Nicky" Mayorkas, was born in Cuba. He was a Cuban Jew of Sephardi (from the former Ottoman Empire, present-day Turkey and Greece) and Ashkenazi (from Poland) background. He owned and operated a steel wool factory on the outskirts of Havana. Nicky Mayorkas studied economics at Dartmouth College. [...] Mayorkas was born in Havana, Cuba. Shortly after the Cuban Revolution, his family fled to Florida and later settled in California. He graduated from UC Berkeley in history with honors, subsequently earning his J.D. from Loyola Marymount University. After law school, Mayorkas worked as an assistant United States attorney and as the United States attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2001. In 2009, Mayorkas was a member of the presidential transition team for Barack Obama, leading the team responsible for the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division. He was appointed by President Obama as the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. As USCIS director, Mayorkas implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process in

• Alejandro Mayorkas | Impeachment, Parents and Family, ...

  Alejandro Mayorkas (born November 24, 1959, Havana, Cuba) is a lawyer who previously served as the secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security (2021–25). He is a former federal prosecutor and served in other high-ranking federal positions during Pres. Barack Obama’s administration (2009–17). In January 2024 the Republican-led House of Representatives advanced two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, charging him with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and with a “breach of public trust” in response to accusations by House Republicans that Mayorkas had failed to enforce federal laws regarding immigration and had allowed the release of thousands of migrants who had been apprehended after entering the country at the U.S.-Mexico border. While the [...] After a childhood that was less affluent than his family’s location in Beverly Hills may suggest, Alejandro Mayorkas earned a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley (1981), and then received a law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles (1985). Following several years of private practice, he went on to work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, one of the Justice Department’s largest districts, where he came to be viewed as one of the office’s best trial lawyers, as his former boss told The Washington Post in 2021. Among other white-collar cases, he prosecuted Heidi Fleiss, the “Hollywood Madam,” operator of an upscale prostitution ring, for tax evasion. [...] Mayorkas was born in Havana in November 1959, less than a year after the dictator Fulgencio Batista was ousted from power by the Fidel Castro-led Cuban Revolution. Mayorkas’s mother, Anita Mayorkas (née Gabor), was a Romanian Jew whose family had immigrated to Cuba in the 1940s after first fleeing to France to escape the Holocaust. In Cuba she met his father, Carlos (later Charles; better known as “Nicky”) Mayorkas, a Cuban-born Jew, whose parents were of Turkish and Polish origin and who had studied at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. At the time of Alejandro’s birth, his father owned and operated a steel-wool mill on the outskirts of Havana. In 1960 the family (including Mayorkas’s elder sister, Cathy) decamped for Miami, as did many other affluent Cubans who were concerned

• Alejandro Mayorkas

  A political refugee born in Havana, Cuba, Mayorkas is the first Latino and immigrant confirmed to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security. He has led a distinguished 30-year career as a law enforcement official and a nationally recognized lawyer in the private sector. Mayorkas served as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2016, and as the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2009 to 2013. During his tenure at DHS, he led the development and implementation of DACA, negotiated cybersecurity and homeland security agreements with foreign governments, led the Department’s response to Ebola and Zika, helped build and administer the Blue Campaign to combat human trafficking, and developed an emergency relief program for orphaned [...] Mayorkas began his government service in the Department of Justice, where he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California, specializing in the prosecution of white collar crime. After nearly nine years as a federal prosecutor, he became the youngest United States Attorney in the nation, overseeing prosecutions of national significance, including the investigation and prosecution of financial fraud, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, public corruption, violent crime, cybercrime, human trafficking, environmental crime, international narcotics money laundering, and securities fraud. Mayorkas received his bachelor’s degree with distinction from the University of California at Berkeley and a law degree from Loyola Law School.

• Alejandro Mayorkas (2021-2025)

  ## Alejandro Mayorkas (2021-2025) Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas was born on November 24, 1959, in Havana, Cuba. His father was Cuban, and his mother was Romanian. She had fled to Cuba during the rise of fascism in Europe before World War II. When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1960, the Mayorkas family left the country, living briefly in Miami, Florida, before settling in Los Angeles, California. Alejandro and his sister grew up in Beverley Hills, California. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, and then attended Loyola Law School, graduating in 1985.

• Alejandro Mayorkas

  #### Sign up to receive Ballotpedia's daily newsletter #### Ballotpedia on Facebook Share this page Follow Ballotpedia #### Ballotpedia on Twitter Share this page Follow Ballotpedia Donate Public policy made simple. Dive into our information hub today! # Alejandro Mayorkas From Ballotpedia Jump to: navigation, search Click here to learn more about the Biden administration. Alejandro Mayorkas Nonpartisan Prior offices: U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Years in office: 2021 - 2025 Predecessor: David Pekoske (Nonpartisan) Successor: Benjamine Huffman (Nonpartisan) Alejandro "Ali" Mayorkas was the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in the Biden administration from 2021 to 2025. [...] The U.S. Senate confirmed Mayorkas on February 2, 2021, by a vote of 56-43. Mayorkas, the 14th secretary since the department was created in 2002, is the first Latino and immigrant to hold the position. Mayorkas was born in Havana, Cuba, and grew up in Los Angeles, California. Mayorkas holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a law degree from Loyola Law School. In 1999, President Bill Clinton (D) appointed Mayorkas U.S. attorney for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. From 2016 to 2020, Mayorkas worked for D.C. law firm WilmerHale as a partner. [...] Mayorkas served as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Barack Obama (D). Mayorkas oversaw the implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)") program, a policy providing legal protections like work authorization to individuals brought to into the country without legal permission as children. Following the news of his nomination, Mayorkas said, "When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me a place of refuge. Now, I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”

• Award

  Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Faithful Service

• Image

  

• Gender

  male

• Educated At

  University of California, Berkeley

• Instance Of

  Q5

• Occupation

  lawyer

• Citizenship

  United States

• Date Of Birth

  11/24/1959

• Place Of Birth

  Havana