Mayorkas to Balance Calls to Abolish ICE With Securing Borders

President-elect Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Homeland Security Department faces a delicate balancing act between immigration advocates calling for an overhaul of deportation policy and law enforcement groups that favor strong borders.

Biden’s nominee, Alejandro Mayorkas, is a former prosecutor backed by the country’s largest police union. As deputy DHS secretary under President Barack Obama, he helped conceive and carry out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which offers legal status to young undocumented immigrants who’d been brought to the U.S. as children. The DHS largely limited deportations to noncitizens with criminal records while Mayorkas was in that ...