The Trials of Alejandro Mayorkas

Mayorkas made history twice when he was confirmed as D.H.S. Secretary, the following February. Born in Cuba and raised in Los Angeles, he became the first immigrant ever to head the department. He is also D.H.S.’s first homegrown leader; typically, secretaries have burnished their standing elsewhere in government or in public life. Marielena Hincapié, a former director of the National Immigration Law Center, told me, “Immigration was going to be front and center whether Biden wanted it to be or not. How would Democrats be able to present a different vision, and to talk about it? They had someone in Mayorkas.”