No one would blame Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for needing a break from the stress that keeps him up at night. The border numbers, the wildfires, the cyberattacks, the terrorist plots.
But after nearly four years in what many deem the hardest job in Washington, Mayorkas says the homeland security concerns will continue to weigh on him when he returns to private life next week.
“Some folks have said, you know what, it’s going to be really great to read the paper and realize that it’s not my problem anymore,” he said in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Government. “I will not feel that. I will never feel divorced from the issues and the risks and the threats and the work of this department.”
Mayorkas, a Cuban refugee and the first immigrant to lead DHS, has had a grueling tenure leading the department through record border surges, nonstop natural disasters, and two assassination attempts on President-elect Donald Trump.
“We managed through many crises,” he said. “I think we came out of those crises stronger and better.”
But as much as he tried to transcend the fraught border politics that often bog down the job — notching wins on raising workplace morale, combating forced labor, and crafting artificial intelligence policies — immigration troubles still dominated his time in office.
Republican-led outrage over record migrant encounters at the southern border ultimately made him the first Cabinet secretary impeached in more than a century, though the Senate later rejected the charges.
“I don’t find regrets to be productive, but I have learned a great deal,” said Mayorkas, who is still deciding his next steps. “And I hope that what I have learned I have shared with colleagues so that they can drive this department forward under the leadership of the new secretary.”
Immigration Defines Homeland Security Chief as He Thinks Bigger
Lessons for Trump, Congress
Senators Friday begin consideration of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), Trump’s pick to replace Mayorkas. The secretary said he’s spoken with Noem several times since she was tapped for the role and was “very impressed and very pleased with the discussions.”
However, he has a word of caution for the incoming administration regarding its plans to double down on immigration enforcement while cutting off legal pathways established during President Joe Biden’s term.
“Adhering to our values, and that includes extending humanitarian relief to those who qualify, is an important component of a functioning immigration system,” he said.
DHS struggled to manage illegal border crossings during much of Biden’s time in office. Republicans blame Mayorkas for scrapping restrictions from Trump’s first term and say he shirked his duty to keep the country secure.
“He has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress,” House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said last year while his committee led impeachment efforts.
GOP Lays Out Final Case to Impeach Homeland Secretary Mayorkas
The agency ultimately found success with a carrot-and-stick approach, with the stick growing stronger with broad asylum restrictions last June. Migrant encounters are now below the 2019 monthly average, Mayorkas said.
Mayorkas hopes Congress learns some homeland security lessons, too.
Over the past four years, lawmakers allowed a key chemical security program to expire, placed DHS’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at risk of dissolution, put federal counter-drone powers in limbo, and nearly left the Disaster Relief Fund dry. And that’s not to mention Congress’ decades-long inability to overhaul US immigration laws and Republicans’ decision to torpedo a bipartisan border deal last year.
Homeland Security Tools at Risk as Congress Ducks To-Do List
“If Congress is unable to find common ground in the service of this department’s mission in various areas, it will be to the detriment of this department’s mission in those areas,” Mayorkas said.
‘Developed the Muscle’
Mayorkas is passionate about the work of DHS, a 260,000-person department assembled after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with a sprawling set of responsibilities spanning counterterrorism, border security, and disaster response. He previously served as deputy secretary and head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services under then-President Barack Obama.
Mayorkas doesn’t want to talk about his legacy, saying he doesn’t view his work in that way. But he’s proud of his team’s progress in building partnerships with tribes, universities, faith groups, and others across the country to help carry out DHS’s work.
“We have established the infrastructure, we have developed the muscle,” he said. “Those relationships, that infrastructure requires continued focus and investment.”
Mayorkas also sees the department as more cohesive than ever before, overcoming the silos that have sometimes stymied its work.
Not everyone would agree. Critics frustrated by the failures of individual agencies within DHS or by leadership see a department in desperate need of an overhaul. A small but rising number of bipartisan lawmakers have called for downsizing the department by breaking off the Secret Service or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The far-right Project 2025 called for dismantling DHS to build an agency that centralizes immigration issues.
Mayorkas has long defended DHS’s current structure, seeing value in the cooperation of agencies focused on different threats.
He’s used his tenure to rally staff on that shared mission. DHS was the most improved large agency in an annual ranking of federal workplace morale in 2024. Some employees jokingly refer to the secretary as “Santo Mayorkas,” a nod to his frequent grants of extra time off.
Mayorkas Uproar Puts DHS in Familiar Spot as Political Football
His commitment to DHS is hard to dispute. After years of politically charged personal attacks, complete with comparisons to Benedict Arnold, Mayorkas says he could have done it all again had the election gone differently and he’d been asked to stay on.
“I’ve invested a lot of my life in it and in the work of government,” Mayorkas said. “I don’t know that I want to be removed from the pressures of it.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editors responsible for this story: