Alejandro Mayorkas

Mayorkas is only the second cabinet member in U.S. history to be impeached, the first being Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876.

His mother, Anita (Gabor), was a Romanian Jew whose family escaped the Holocaust and fled to Cuba in the 1940s before leaving for the United States after the Cuban Revolution.

Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas (born November 24, 1959) is an American lawyer and politician serving since 2021 as the seventh United States Secretary of Homeland Security.

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 graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction.

He received his Juris Doctor in 1985 from Loyola Law School, where he was an editor of the Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review.

After three years as a litigation associate in private practice, Mayorkas became an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California in 1989.

He prosecuted a wide array of federal crimes, developing a specialization in the prosecution of white-collar crime, including tax evasion and money laundering.

His prosecutions included the successful prosecution of Operation PolarCap, then the largest money laundering case in the nation; the conviction at trial of Heidi Fleiss on charges of federal conspiracy, tax fraud, and money laundering charges; the successful prosecutions of two largest telemarketing fraud operations that preyed on the elderly; and the successful prosecution of a health care fraud and insurance fraud conspiracy.

Mayorkas served as the coordinator of the Southern California Telemarketing Fraud Task Force, overseeing the coordination of federal, state, and local law enforcement and regulatory agencies to most aggressively combat telemarketing fraud throughout the Central District of California.

From 1996 to 1998, Mayorkas served as Chief of the Office's General Crimes Section, overseeing the training and trial work of all new Assistant United States Attorneys in the Criminal Division.

He received numerous awards from federal law enforcement agencies, including from FBI Director Louis Freeh for the successful prosecution of Operation PolarCap.

In 1998, Mayorkas was recommended by Senator Dianne Feinstein and appointed by President Bill Clinton as the United States Attorney for the Central District of California, becoming the country's youngest United States Attorney.

He was appointed on December 21, 1998.

During the Obama administration, he also served in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), first as director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (2009–2013), and as deputy secretary of DHS (2013–2016).

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 was appointed the United States attorney for the

Central District of California in Los Angeles during the administration of President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, where he oversaw the prosecution of high-profile criminal cases.

Mayorkas was a member of the presidential transition team for Barack Obama before he assumed office in January 2009, where he led the team responsible for the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division.

Mayorkas was appointed by President Obama as the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

On May 20, 2009, the nomination was received by the Senate; on August 7, 2009, the nomination was confirmed by the Senate by voice vote.

As USCIS director, Mayorkas led United States citizenship through management efficiencies and fiscal responsibility, and safeguarded the integrity of the immigration system.

He 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.

In 2016, Mayorkas became a partner at the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, in their Washington, D.C., office.

On November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden announced he would nominate Mayorkas as secretary of homeland security in his Cabinet.

Mayorkas's nomination received the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police and former secretaries Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff (who served under George W. Bush), Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson (under whom Mayorkas served), who said Biden "could not have found a more qualified person".

On February 2, 2021, Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate on a 56–43 vote, with significant Senate Republican opposition.

He was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris on February 2, 2021.

On February 13, 2024, Mayorkas was impeached, with a 214–213 vote, by the United States House of Representatives.

This came after an earlier unsuccessful impeachment vote of Mayorkas one week prior.