This week the New York Post reported that Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has emerged as a leading contender for the top spot at DOJ. The race to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder has included the controversial Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and like Perez, Mayorkas’ tenure in the federal government is filled with a considerable amount of ethics-defying shadiness.
Prior to taking his current position as the number two man at DHS, Mayorkas was head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is mandated to administer the biggest immigration system in the world and carries a multi-billion dollar budget and a staff of 18,000, according to the Post.
Before his USCIS appointment, Mayorkas was working in the California district attorney’s office as a Clinton-appointed attorney. In 2001, he intervened in the conviction of the son of Horacio Vignali, a major donor to Hispanic Democrats in Southern California, after he was caught trafficking $5 million worth of cocaine. Working with Hillary Clinton’s brother Hugh Rodham, a lobbyist who was paid $200,000 to help secure clemency for Vignali’s son, Mayorkas interfered by attempting to secure a pardon from the White House.
Years later during his Senate confirmation hearing, Mayorkas admitted that he had “made a mistake.”
After becoming head of USCIS, Mayorkas again became embroiled in a Rodham-related controversy; this time with Hillary’s other brother, Tony. Between 2010 and 2013, Tony Rodham communicated with Mayorkas over a dozen times, urging him to unlawfully expedite certain applications for “immigrant-investor” visas. Tony was using this USCIS program to finance his electric car company, GreenTech Automotive.
The company, which also involved current-Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, has since been proven to be a complete sham. Created solely to extract exorbitant fees from mostly Chinese visa applicants, the company never came close to providing the requisite amount of jobs needed under the program to grant green cards to investor-applicants. As whistleblower emails received by Senator Grassley’s Judiciary Committee later revealed, Rodham complained to Mayorkas that USCIS officials, who had serious questions about the company’s business plan, were “improperly” delaying the visas and keeping applicants’ investment funds frozen as a consequence.
In response to Rodham and McAuliffe’s request for special privileges, Mayorkas committed a classic separation of powers violation. Mayorkas reversed the decision of an administrative judge who had previously found certain financing methods employed by Rodham and McAuliffe to be in violation of USCIS regulations. The two were later made the subject of an SEC complaint for violating federal securities law.
The inherent problems of manipulation and influence of a judge who adjudicates decisions of the executive branch yet is embedded within it (as opposed to being insulated in the judiciary branch) are textbook discussion points in administrative law. When Mayorkas rewrote the administrative law judge’s decision to approve the visas and to facilitate Rodham and McAuliffe’s sham business deal, he violated a fundamental constitutional principle, one which the founders sought to protect when they set up a tripartite system of government.
As for his views on amnesty, Mayorkas has given the keynote address at the annual event of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, one of the biggest lobbyists for open borders. He has spoken at the Soros-funded Migration Policy Institute.
Judging by his derogation of ethics, the constitution and the law, Alejandro Mayorkas may just be the perfect pick for Obama’s next attorney general.
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