executive Calendar--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I have the honor of serving on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--a committee you serve on--which oversees, as you know, the Department of Homeland Security since the committee was first formed.

Almost two decades later, I remain convinced that the nominees we confirm to lead that Department must possess sound judgment, integrity, relevant experience, boundless energy, and the leadership skills that will enable them to take on some of the most daunting challenges that we face today as a nation.

The Department of Homeland Security is a Department with a budget of over $50 billion and a staff of over 240,000 men and women. Its Agencies protect our country from ever-evolving domestic and foreign threats; they respond to natural disasters; and they help to secure our critical infrastructure.

Unfortunately, in recent years, the senior leadership ranks of this Department have come to remind many of us as something akin to executive branch Swiss cheese, with critical positions remaining vacant for far too long or without Senate confirmation at all. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security has been without a Senate-confirmed Secretary for 21 months. Think about that--21 months. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of work to be done from the clear and present threat of domestic terrorism to responding to the SolarWinds cyber breach to helping distribute the COVID vaccine.

Now, more than ever, it is crucial for this important Department to be led by men and women who have been vetted and confirmed by Members of this body. The American people deserve a capable leader at the helm of this Department, and I believe that leader is Alejandro Mayorkas.

Ali represents the best of America. Born in Havana, Cuba, Ali knows firsthand what it is like for a family to flee its native land and come to the United States in search of refuge. He is a man of integrity and a person of principle who possesses a truly, truly remarkable work ethic. What is more, he may well be the most qualified nominee we have ever been asked to consider to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

He has previously served admirably as its Deputy Secretary for nearly 4 years, and before that as the head of DHS's largest Agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. As Director of this Agency, he worked to combat immigration fraud. He directed and implemented the DACA Program to protect hundreds of thousands of Dreamers and much more.

As Deputy Secretary, he led the Department's successful Unity of Effort initiative to improve morale in an Agency which previously had the lowest morale of any large Agency in our Federal Government. In fact, the Department that reported the greatest improvement in morale in the final year of the Obama administration was the Department of Homeland Security, in large part, due to Ali's leadership and that of former Secretary Jeh Johnson.

As Deputy Secretary, Mr. Mayorkas also shepherded through Congress cyber security legislation to enable the Department of Homeland Security to better protect our dot-gov and private sector networks. I think he may have also had something to do with reining in the Ebola plague.

Those who know Ali well will tell you that he is no ideologue. He has no partisan agenda. Rather, he is a thoughtful, policy-minded public servant who has spent much of his career improving the Department of Homeland Security so that the men and women who serve there can better protect our homeland.

We have seen that he is willing to work with Democrats, Republicans, and their staffs to get things done. That is one of the many reasons that five former Secretaries of Homeland Security, Democratic and Republican alike, have encouraged us to confirm him swiftly.

I know that Ali can do this job. He has already demonstrated that. And I believe that many of our colleagues here today know it as well. After all, Ali Mayorkas has been confirmed three times in the past, including once as U.S. attorney for the Central District of Columbia.

Having said that, though, some of our Republican colleagues are attempting now to use a 2013 IG investigation as a cudgel against his nomination. As it turns out, we have seen this movie before. I should note that a number of those colleagues were not serving in Congress at that time in 2013 and most were not serving on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee when we considered Ali's nomination that year to serve as Deputy Secretary.

I was privileged to serve as chairman of the committee at that time. In fact, I led the fight to confirm him. It was the toughest fight I have had in 20 years here. It is one thing to disagree with the nominee politically, but to continue to question Ali's dedication and integrity on the basis of an IG report, as some of our Republican colleagues have done, flies in the face of available evidence, including his decades of public service. At a time when our Nation faces so many crises, we cannot afford less than full support for this nominee.

So I want to take a few minutes today to set the record straight, if I can. Here are the facts.

In 2013, an IG investigation into Ali Mayorkas's oversight of a program within U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, known as the EB-5 Program, was conducted in a highly irregular manner, including through false leaks to the media literally on the eve of his confirmation hearing. As a result of the IG's public leaks and his failure to complete a report before the close of Congress, Ali was denied a chance to have any concerns fully litigated ahead of his confirmation in the Senate in 2013.

Ultimately, the IG who initiated the investigation stepped down later that year amid bipartisan calls for his resignation. Last year, that same former IG was charged by the Department of Justice with 16 counts of fraud--16 counts of fraud

Following Ali's confirmation, my staff and I worked to ensure that the subsequent IG completed the report into any allegations. In 2015, that new IG, John Roth, produced a report building on the work of the 2013 investigation. The report found no evidence of wrongdoing by Ali. None. What it did suggest, however, was that some of his actions as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services may have created the ``appearance of favoritism.''

In particular, it asserted that Ali met with a number of well- connected individuals over time regarding their concerns over the EB-5 Investor Visa Program. After Ali joined the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as its Director in 2009, he came to the conclusion that this program was not well run. He was not alone in this conclusion. Ali has testified that as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, he received more complaints from Members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, regarding the EB-5 Program than he did about any other program.

In response to these bipartisan concerns, as Director of the Agency, Ali did what, in my opinion, many of us would expect an Agency head to do. He rolled up his sleeves, and he worked with his employees to gain an understanding of how the program was being run and to find out how they might make it run better. He directed systemic changes that included improving management and administration of the program in order to reduce favoritism and to combat fraud. He also proposed reforms of the program to Congress in an effort to prevent future abuses--reforms which, unfortunately, were not pursued by Congress--our fault, not his.

And yes, as Director, he set a precedent for getting back to Members of Congress quickly in response to their inquiries, even if the answers his Agency came up with was ultimately not what they wanted to hear.

Completing the 2015 IG report was important to clear Ali of any wrongdoing. But these findings and Ali's actions have been mischaracterized by some of our colleagues who assert that he showed favoritism by reaching out personally to the staff of former Senator Harry Reid over an EB-5-related issue they had raised on behalf of a constituent.

As it turns out, though, the report is clear. Ali Mayorkas did reach out to that staff--not to deliver preferential treatment but, rather, to let the staff know that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would not be able to accommodate the request of that staff and their Senator. And why? If responsiveness to inquiries by Members of Congress and their staff, regardless of whether the response is favorable or not, is a problem for my colleagues--any of my colleagues--that is news to me.

Let me make one more point, if I may. As someone who knows Ali and has known him for years--knows his family, knows his work, knows his ethic--I believe the 2015 IG report was missing some needed context. Let me try to provide it

Fortunately, though, Ali provided it in a 32-page response. The response was almost as long as the IG report itself. Among other things, it describes how he met not just with Democratic Members but with a number of our Republican colleagues to address issues important to them, including international adoption and fighting fraud in our immigration programs. Following those meetings, just as with the EB-5 Program, Ali took appropriate steps to make improvements based on feedback from his constituents. That is what leaders should do.

Those examples and others included right there in the 2015 IG report serve to further illustrate Ali's commitment to doing what he thought was right, to improving the Department by carrying out the law without fear or favor, and by responding promptly and fully to inquiries from Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

If Ali Mayorkas is confirmed today, I am hopeful that many of our colleagues and our staffs will have a chance in the years to come to work with him and his team at the Department of Homeland Security and witness for themselves the kind of leader he truly is. We are fortunate that an individual as well prepared and qualified as Alejandro Mayorkas may soon have the opportunity to lead the Department through the many crises and challenges it faces and which our country faces today.

But you don't have to take my word for it. The late Tom Coburn, a dear friend of mine and former colleague of many of us, led the fight against Ali's confirmation in 2013, when he had been nominated to be Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. Tom was then the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, and I was serving as its chairman. Tom, sadly, is deceased. We lost a good man, a really good man, a couple of years ago.

Tom's staff director of the committee, at the time, was a very capable gentleman. His name is Keith Ashdown. I think it is important to note that last week, Keith sent a letter to our committee. In it, he wrote of his strong support today of Ali's nomination to serve as Secretary of DHS.

Mr. Ashdown wrote these words. He said:

I first came to know Mayorkas when I was the Republican staff director of this committee [the Homeland Security committee]. At that time, I was working to block his nomination to serve as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

He went on to say:

With the benefit of hindsight, I am glad my efforts to block his nomination were ultimately unsuccessful.

How often do you hear that? Mr. Ashdown went on to write:

As Deputy Secretary, Mayorkas worked in a bipartisan manner to respond to the Committee's requests and concerns.

He added:

Having been on the other side of this battle, I understand the importance of vetting a [nomination] thoroughly. But no one has been vetted more than has Ali Mayorkas.

Mr. Ashton concluded with these words. He said:

I urge the [United States] Senate to expeditiously confirm Ali Mayorkas as [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary without delay.

Without delay.

Signed:

Sincerely, Keith Ashdown.

Let me close today, by saying that I am grateful, and I know that the Mayorkas family is grateful as well, to Keith Ashdown and to the Republican Senators who have broken ranks in committee and on the floor in last week's cloture vote, who have taken the time to fully consider this nomination, and who now support it. We are grateful to you. I sincerely hope that more of our colleagues will join them and us today.

I would say to my colleagues, I don't stake my reputation on a lot of people, but I am more than willing to stake it on Ali Mayorkas, just as I have three times before in this same Chamber. If you are undecided today, colleagues, I hope you will join me this time. Ali Mayorkas will make us and this country proud. In fact, I believe, he already has.

While we are waiting for folks to come onto the floor, I just want to explain to people who ask: What is this EB-5 Program? It is a program that is designed to bring foreign capital into this country to help build businesses and provide jobs in return for the ability to come to this country and eventually have legal residency here. That is what it is about.

I want to say everything I do, I know I can do better. Every program that we have, even the ones that I helped to create, we can make them better. The EB-5 Program, which is a bipartisan program that was created, I think, under partnership with Ted Kennedy and Senator Chuck Grassley, if I am not mistaken, wasn't a perfect program, and it wasn't administered in a perfect manner either.

The Constitution of our country has its Preamble, as we all know. It starts off with these words: ``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union.'' That is what it says: ``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union.''

That includes writing more perfect legislation and creating more perfect programs. When we find that they are not and that they are flawed, and that maybe some of the people who are administering them are ill-equipped with their skills and technology and backgrounds to oversee those programs, we have to make some changes. To those people whose feelings were hurt and those people who maybe had to find a different path in their careers, I reach out to you with a heavy heart.

But I want to close by saying: Ali Mayorkas is a good man. He is a great nominee. He served us before, and he will do it again. Let's give him our votes.

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