United States: Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban immigrant in charge of Homeland Security
Alejandro Mayorkas, pictured in May 2016 during an AP baseball game - Alex Brandon
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
In the United States, President-elect Joe Biden is preparing his arrival at the White House and fine-tuning the team that will accompany him.
Another post that will be essential in the future administration is that of Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States.
And it was Alejandro Mayorkas, a 61-year-old Cuban immigrant who was chosen.
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"
I can't think of anyone more qualified
."
This is how Jeh Johnson, former Minister of Homeland Security under Barack Obama, described the choice of Alejandro Mayorkas.
It must be said that the future minister was at the time of Barack Obama, Jeh Johnson's under-secretary.
A man who therefore knows the house very well and who will therefore be able to put in order a ministry which was very politicized during the mandate of Donald Trump.
“
When I was very young, the United States was a safe haven for my family and myself
,” Alejandro Mayorkas said on social media.
Today this son of immigrants, born in Havana in 1959, wants his host land to rediscover this tradition.
It is therefore an in-depth reform which is announced in this sprawling ministry.
Alejandro Mayorkas, former lawyer and federal prosecutor is the man for the job.
It is he who is in a way the father of DACA, a program adopted in 2012 and interrupted by Donald Trump, intended to regularize the situation of undocumented young people arriving as children in the United States.
A program that will be reactivated by Joe Biden which should help restore the image of a ministry undermined by the expulsions and
separations
of migrant
families
at the American border in recent years.
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United States
Joe biden
Immigration