WASHINGTON (AP) — In the waning days of the Biden administration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended his agency’s work to tamp down border-crossing numbers and argued against breaking apart the sprawling department in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press.
President-elect Donald Trump, who promised an aggressive Day 1 effort to stop illegal immigration and remove people in the country illegally, has chosen South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to take over the agency responsible for border and airport security, disaster response, protections for high-level dignitaries and more. She faces a confirmation hearing Wednesday.
As he prepares to leave office, Mayorkas said he has spoken repeatedly to Noem, including about the Jan. 1 truck attack in New Orleans and the wildfires in California, calling the conversations “meaningful, very productive, very positive.”
Here are some takeaways from AP’s interview with Mayorkas:
The number of people crossing the border illegally initially skyrocketed under President Joe Biden before falling sharply this year.
Republican critics pointed to the rising numbers to argue that the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to control the border, and many voters agreed this November.
Mayorkas argued the increase actually started toward the end of the first Trump presidency but then the COVID-19 pandemic suppressed migration. The U.S. climbed out of the pandemic faster than other countries in the hemisphere, and the numbers increased, he said.
Mayorkas said people are on the move worldwide, not just heading toward the U.S.
“The level of displacement is now greater than it ever has been since World War II,” he said. “And that is a phenomenon that is experienced internationally.”
Mayorkas praised what the Biden administration has done to address the rising numbers, including creating safe mobility offices in other parts of the world and negotiating agreements with other countries to return their citizens.
“It’s a multipronged, multifaceted approach,” he said.
Mayorkas became a lightning rod for criticism about border security and was impeached in early 2024 by Republicans who argued that he wasn’t upholding immigration laws. At the time, Mayorkas called those charges politically motivated and baseless.
He said it’s important to remember the context when the Biden administration came into office. Title 42 — the pandemic-era rule allowing officials to quickly eject migrants without letting them request asylum — was still in place. Biden eventually ended the policy, although, Mayorkas said, huge pressure existed to keep it over concern that immigration numbers would climb.
The secretary said the department had to build the capacity to do things like beef up the number of expedited removals and pointed to a lack of funding from Congress.
“We turned to Congress and requested supplemental funding. We didn’t succeed,” Mayorkas said. “We actually struck a bipartisan Senate deal that would have been an enduring solution to the border. … It was politically torpedoed.”
On the other end of the political spectrum, some immigration advocates have been disappointed by the Biden administration, pointing to asylum restrictions put in place when the southern border is overwhelmed and other policies.
Mayorkas pushed back, pointing to examples like the rebuilt refugee program, which Trump put on life support his first term.
“I couldn’t disagree more vigorously. I just fundamentally disagree,” Mayorkas said. “Do they understand the reality of the number of encounters that we experienced at the border and how unacceptable that is from a border security perspective?”
One of Trump’s key campaign promises is to carry out mass deportations of migrants in the country illegally.
Mayorkas said he wouldn’t “judge intended actions by headlines,” although he noted that headlines can “instill fear.”
But he said promises by the Trump administration to prioritize enforcing removals of migrants who are national security or public safety threats was what DHS was already doing.
“That is exactly what we have done and what we have focused upon,” Mayorkas said.
The secretary noted Trump’s support for the H-1B visa program, “the high skilled labor pathway with which I agree.”
And he said Trump’s comments about finding a solution for immigrants brought to the country as children by their parents “gives one hope that perhaps legislative reform providing status to them is potentially foreseeable.”
DHS was born in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with the aim of creating an agency responsible for defending the homeland and preventing acts of terrorism.
Twenty-two agencies were thrown together, and it’s now the third-largest federal department with 260,000 staffers.
Critics question whether DHS has truly gelled. Project 2025, the policy blueprint by the Heritage Foundation that lays out a conservative vision for American government and society, calls for breaking up the department.
Mayorkas said that wouldn’t be good for homeland security.
“The challenges that the homeland faces have also become more complex, more dynamic and involve multiple elements of our department,” he said. “And I think this department is more fit for purpose now than it ever has been before. And I think that it is working more cohesively than it ever has been before.”
Mayorkas noted the work to help employees during his tenure, such as pay raises for frontline officers at the Transportation Security Administration and steps to improve mental health.
DHS has perennially been at the bottom of a job satisfaction survey carried out yearly of all federal agencies. But this year, Mayorkas noted, it received an award for climbing up the rankings.
“This year we climbed even higher, and that is the product of hard work,” he said.
Mayorkas listed a litany of threats facing America: domestic extremists; “adverse nation states,” including China, Iran, North Korea and Russia; extreme weather events; cybercriminals; and more.
Asked which the next administration should be most concerned with, he said: “I think they need to focus on all of the above.”
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