Speaker 1: Alohundro Mayorchis is the Secretary of Homeland Security, a department
Speaker 1: created after nine to eleven. Alohundro Mayorchis overseas through his department,
Speaker 1: border security a top issue for certain in the next
Speaker 1: presidential election. Recently, I had a chance to sit down
Speaker 1: with Alohandro Mayorchis, an immigrant from Cuba, to talk about
Speaker 1: issues facing his department, including the challenges from TikTok. Let
Speaker 1: me talk about the elephant in the room, because you
Speaker 1: were the second secretary in the history of our country
Speaker 1: to be impeached. Was what was it like living through
Speaker 1: that impeachment process and is it finally over now?
Speaker 2: To the best of my knowledge, it's over, so you know,
Speaker 2: quite frankly, I have said publicly a number of times
Speaker 2: that I did not allow it to distract me. That
Speaker 2: was actually sincere I focused intensely on my work throughout.
Speaker 2: In a week where it was an issue of greater
Speaker 2: prominence in the life of the department, I might have
Speaker 2: spent twenty minutes on it. I really just focused on
Speaker 2: my work. It had its impact on loved ones.
Speaker 3: So it's behind us now.
Speaker 1: Though, as Will Rogers once said, and paraphrasing him, the
Speaker 1: country is never safe as long as the house is
Speaker 1: in session, right, so you never know, but may never
Speaker 1: come back, right, one would hope not.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's talk about the border.
Speaker 1: It appears that there are a lot of people coming
Speaker 1: in over the border. This is obviously one of the
Speaker 1: subjects of that people wanted to impeach you. Some people
Speaker 1: wanted to them peach you over Is it really that
Speaker 1: we're getting more people coming in over the border illegally
Speaker 1: or is it just the appearance of that?
Speaker 2: Oh no, No, The number of encounters at the southern border
Speaker 2: is very high, but it's very very important number one
Speaker 2: to contextualize it and number two to explain it from
Speaker 2: a context perspective. The world is seeing the greatest level
Speaker 2: of displacement since at least World War Two. I think
Speaker 2: the recent report was that there are seventy three million
Speaker 2: displaced people in the United States. And so the challenge
Speaker 2: of migration is not exclusive to the southern border, nor
Speaker 2: to the western hemisphere.
Speaker 4: It is global.
Speaker 2: And when I speak to partners across the Atlantic, it's
Speaker 2: the first issue that they raise.
Speaker 4: The first challenge that what is the reason for that?
Speaker 4: So well, one has.
Speaker 2: The customary reasons of displacement, violence insecurity, poverty, corruption, authoritarian regimes,
Speaker 2: now increasingly extreme weather events that propel people to leave.
Speaker 2: Why are we experiencing what we are? It is for
Speaker 2: those very reasons why people leave their countries of origin.
Speaker 2: We also remember, in our hemisphere we overcame COVID more
Speaker 2: rapidly than any other country. We had, in a post
Speaker 2: COVID world, eleven million jobs to fill. We are a
Speaker 2: country of choice as a destination. And one takes those
Speaker 2: two forces, and then one considers the fact that we
Speaker 2: have an immigration system that is broken fundamentally, and we
Speaker 2: have a level of encounter that we do. And when
Speaker 2: we speak of a broken system, let me just capture
Speaker 2: that as succinctly as I can. The average time between
Speaker 2: encounter and the point of final adjudication of an asylum
Speaker 2: claim is seven plus years. Approximately seventy percent of the
Speaker 2: people who meet an initial threshold for asylum the credible
Speaker 2: fear standard about seventy qualify and so they stay for
Speaker 2: seven plus years, and the ultimate adjudication about twenty percent qualify.
Speaker 1: So in our country, if somebody seeks political asylum and
Speaker 1: they legitimately need political asylum, is it our law that
Speaker 1: they automatically get it if they have legitimate means. There's
Speaker 1: no quotas or anything on how many people we can
Speaker 1: accept for a political asylum.
Speaker 2: There is no quota on the asylum population, and one
Speaker 2: just has to persuade a judge.
Speaker 1: So you've been Homeland Security secretary under President Biden from
Speaker 1: the beginning of administration. So how many people would you
Speaker 1: say since that time have come over the border of
Speaker 1: the southern border, let's say, illegally seeking asylum. They're bringing
Speaker 1: drugs or whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2: I do want to differentiate because we're in a political
Speaker 2: environment that demonizes individuals encounter at the border, and there's
Speaker 2: a vulnerability to painting with a broad brush people who
Speaker 2: are fleeing in coming to the United States. And so
Speaker 2: I want to separate and I will be incessant in
Speaker 2: this separate drug smugglers from individuals seeking asylum or even
Speaker 2: if they don't have a basis to remain in the
Speaker 2: United States seeking.
Speaker 4: A better life.
Speaker 2: And so the number of encounters have been very well
Speaker 2: published this past year. This past month, we had about
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty four thousand encounters in.
Speaker 1: This past month. But let's say since the beginning of
Speaker 1: the administration. Is it millions of people? It's several million people. Well,
Speaker 1: there was legislation that was developed, I think in the Senate,
Speaker 1: bipartisan legislation, and it got stalled. AT's say in the House?
Speaker 1: Would that have solved our problem?
Speaker 2: Had it passed, it would have been a transformative change
Speaker 2: in managing the number of people we encounter.
Speaker 1: What was the main thing that would have been in
Speaker 1: that law that we don't have now.
Speaker 3: That you would have liked to have.
Speaker 2: So we would have taken a seven plus year time
Speaker 2: period between the time of encounter and final adjudication and
Speaker 2: reduced it to as little as ninety days. And that
Speaker 2: changes an intending migrants risk calculus, because if they know
Speaker 2: that they can stay for multiple years and work and
Speaker 2: make more money than they can and safely so than
Speaker 2: in their country of origin, they will decide to make
Speaker 2: that journey. If they understand that they have to pay
Speaker 2: their life savings to a smuggling organization only to stay
Speaker 2: for a matter of weeks, that is a very different
Speaker 2: risk calculus. The world of migration has changed dramatically over
Speaker 2: the last even fifteen years. We're not dealing with the
Speaker 2: coyotes that I dealt with as a federal prosecutor that
Speaker 2: where they smuggled two three people at a time. We're
Speaker 2: dealing with extremes, ordinarily sophisticated smuggling organizations in a multi
Speaker 2: billion dollar industry that is also international.
Speaker 1: But that industry is it one design to bring drugs
Speaker 1: into the United States or designed to get people to
Speaker 1: come United States for which they get a fee.
Speaker 4: It is the latter.
Speaker 2: But what we are seeing, and it should be unsurprising
Speaker 2: to everyone that we're seeing a not quite a merger,
Speaker 2: I would say, a synthesis of transnational criminal organizations and
Speaker 2: the smuggling organizations.
Speaker 4: There's so much money to be made.
Speaker 3: The people who.
Speaker 1: Are now coming over. Are we separating families like words?
Speaker 1: Under the Trump administration, there was a lot of controversy
Speaker 1: children being separated from parents.
Speaker 3: Is that happening now or not happening?
Speaker 2: No, that was a deliberate practice to deter families from
Speaker 2: reaching the southern border. Was the separation of them That
Speaker 2: was condemned across the board. Cruelty is not something that
Speaker 2: is an instrument of a value based country, and we
Speaker 2: eliminated that practice. I actually was eliminated in all fairness
Speaker 2: towards the end of the Trump administration, we issued a
Speaker 2: policy preventing it, and we actually the president created a
Speaker 2: Family Reunification Task Force that I chair that is actually
Speaker 2: reuniting separated families.
Speaker 1: Okay, so President Trump campaigned when he first campaigned for president,
Speaker 1: on creating a wall, and I guess some part of
Speaker 1: the wall was built. But would not a wall have
Speaker 1: helped somewhat if we had a big wall? Would that
Speaker 1: not block people from coming? Even though people like to
Speaker 1: make fun of the wall and expensive, would it not
Speaker 1: have had some impact on reducing illegal immigration?
Speaker 2: So look, in the twenty first century, I wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 2: propose cementing ballards on the ground and constructing an immovable wall,
Speaker 2: given the dynamism and you know, the rapid change in
Speaker 2: migratory patterns. But I just have to quote Secretary of Politano,
Speaker 2: you build a twenty foot wall, they'll build a twenty
Speaker 2: one foot ladder.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about your background.
Speaker 1: You don't come to the cabinet with the conventional background
Speaker 1: of many people who had this position.
Speaker 3: So where were you born?
Speaker 4: I was born in Havana, Cuba.
Speaker 3: Really, and what age did you leave?
Speaker 2: My parents brought my sister and me here to the
Speaker 2: United States as political refugees when I was about one.
Speaker 3: And did they come in I legally or illegally?
Speaker 4: They came in illegally.
Speaker 2: My father was a bit prescient. Although we didn't leave early,
Speaker 2: but we left early enough.
Speaker 1: So there isn't that big a Cuban or wasn't that
Speaker 1: big a Cuban Jewish community. But your mother and father
Speaker 1: both Jewish. Her father was Sephardic, yes, and his ancestors
Speaker 1: came from His.
Speaker 4: Father was from Turkey, his mother from Poland.
Speaker 3: And your mother was Ashkenazi Jewish.
Speaker 2: My mother fled Romania to France, France to Cuba late.
Speaker 2: Her father lost eight brothers and other family in the
Speaker 2: concentration camps. They left so late they couldn't get to Israel,
Speaker 2: and our policies at that time were not as welcoming
Speaker 2: as one would have hoped at a time of great
Speaker 2: human distress.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they came to the United States legally. Where
Speaker 1: did they come?
Speaker 2: So we arrived in Miami, and we lived in Miami
Speaker 2: until my father found a better work opportunity in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 3: You were growing up in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: I grew up for most of my life in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: And you speak Spanish fluently, I speak at my grammar
Speaker 2: is not something that I take great pride in.
Speaker 3: Okay, So where did you go to high school?
Speaker 4: I went to Beverly Hills High School.
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills High School with a lot of movie stars
Speaker 1: kids and things like that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting that you would you consider Jack
Speaker 2: Abramoff a movie star. I don't remember any movie stars.
Speaker 2: You know, when you hear probably when everyone hears Beverly
Speaker 2: Hills High School, they think you know the Clampet family.
Speaker 2: There were four elementary schools that fed into the high school.
Speaker 4: Two were tended to be.
Speaker 2: Of a more affluent community and the other two were
Speaker 2: quite frankly modest. I grew up in a lower middle
Speaker 2: class the middle class home, never wanting for anything, an
Speaker 2: incredibly close family.
Speaker 3: You have siblings.
Speaker 1: I have three siblings, And are they interested in homeland
Speaker 1: security or not so much?
Speaker 4: They are probably recent devotees.
Speaker 3: Okay, So where did you go to Where did you
Speaker 3: go to college?
Speaker 4: I went to University of California at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you graduate me or then you went to
Speaker 1: law school in Los Angeles?
Speaker 4: Loyal law school?
Speaker 3: All right? So you graduated from law school, and what
Speaker 3: did you do?
Speaker 2: I went into a law firm. I wanted to go
Speaker 2: into public service. This country has given my family everything,
Speaker 2: and I very much wanted to give back. I wanted
Speaker 2: to go into public service, and I had my eyes
Speaker 2: on the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. They
Speaker 2: required three years of experience, and so I gained three
Speaker 2: years of experience in a private law firm.
Speaker 4: And then went into the US Attorney's office.
Speaker 1: So you went into as a federal prosecutor, and you
Speaker 1: were an assistant US attorney in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: For eight and a half years, specializing in sophisticated fraud cases.
Speaker 1: Did you get involved in the campaign when Barack Obama
Speaker 1: was running for president?
Speaker 3: Were you involved in his campaign anyway? I was okay.
Speaker 1: So you ultimately get involved in the transition with Barack Obama.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I led the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice
Speaker 2: transition to.
Speaker 1: And you took a position in the Obama administration. Initially,
Speaker 1: what was your position?
Speaker 2: The position was the Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services,
Speaker 2: an agency within the Department that administers the Legal Legal
Speaker 2: Immigration Center.
Speaker 1: And then after that you got promoted to be the
Speaker 1: Deputy Homeland Security Secretary under Janet Napolitano. Yes, okay, And
Speaker 1: so that didn't convince you that this is a complicated
Speaker 1: area and you shouldn't want to come back as secretary, or.
Speaker 2: That I am complicated, difficult, challenging and extraordinarily full.
Speaker 1: Right, So you go back after the President Obama Leave's office,
Speaker 1: you go back, you join held Wilma hal And in
Speaker 1: Whatsch City here in Washington. Okay, so you're a partner there.
Speaker 1: How did you get connected to the Biden administration? Did
Speaker 1: they remember you from the Obama administration or they did
Speaker 1: They just called you up and said, guess what we
Speaker 1: like us, deputy, Now you can be the secretary.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say it was in that way, but I was.
Speaker 2: Extraordinarily proud to be contacted by the incoming president, the
Speaker 2: president elect, to be considered.
Speaker 1: Then, did your family say you're making a lot of
Speaker 1: money here, your way up here in compensation and you're
Speaker 1: going to go down here again and that was a factor.
Speaker 4: No, you didn't care, Okay, didn't care. It wouldn't be.
Speaker 4: It is what it is, what it is. Okay.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the Department of Homeland Security. How
Speaker 1: many people work at the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 2: About two hundred and sixty thousand. When are they third
Speaker 2: largest department in the federal government.
Speaker 3: What are the main parts of it?
Speaker 1: I know you have certain parts that were put together
Speaker 1: out of Treasury Department other things.
Speaker 3: What are your main divisions?
Speaker 2: The expanse of our portfolio is extraordinary, from online child
Speaker 2: sexual exploitation and abuse, crimes of exploitation, human trafficking, to
Speaker 2: facilitating lawful trade and travel, to search and rescue and
Speaker 2: security in the Arctic and the Indo Pacific, to addressing
Speaker 2: the flooding yesterday and today in Houston, Texas, where we
Speaker 2: have a number of fatalities, and the frequency and gravity
Speaker 2: of extreme weather events is only growing, the cyber attacks
Speaker 2: from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, It's just it's extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Do you ever get a weekend off you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about some crisis somewhere?
Speaker 4: I take My goal is to take half a Saturday.
Speaker 1: So a number of people I think from Homeland Security
Speaker 1: and or the CIA or NSA have gone to Capitol
Speaker 1: Hill and said that TikTok is a danger to our
Speaker 1: NAB security, but the public hasn't been given that much
Speaker 1: detailed information about what the threat is. How much of
Speaker 1: a threat to our nation security is TikTok?
Speaker 4: The People's Republic of China.
Speaker 2: Acts adversely to the interests of the United States in
Speaker 2: different ways. One of those ways is through the dissemination
Speaker 2: of disinformation, the intentional communication of false statements, and TikTok
Speaker 2: is an extraordinary avenue through which to disseminate disinformation to
Speaker 2: millions and millions of people.
Speaker 1: But newspapers can disseminate this information. Why is it If
Speaker 1: it's over social media, it's got to be banned. If
Speaker 1: a newspaper says the kind of same things that is
Speaker 1: over TikTok, it wouldn't be banned because of the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: Why is the First Amendment not protecting the TikTok social
Speaker 1: media devices?
Speaker 2: Well, it's not to me an issue of the First Amendment.
Speaker 2: It's an issue of security. As we are talking about
Speaker 2: a company and an algorithm that is controlled by a
Speaker 2: foreign state that acts adversely to the interests of the
Speaker 2: United States, and we have an obligation.
Speaker 4: To protect Americans.
Speaker 1: But the presumption is that people aren't smart enough to
Speaker 1: know that it's disinformation, and they can't make the decision
Speaker 1: for themselves.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Well, we're talking about many, many young people that access TikTok.
Speaker 2: I would posit that in this country we don't have
Speaker 2: the level of digital literacy that I think we would
Speaker 2: all want. We're all vulnerable to disinformation, and the reality
Speaker 2: is that we have an obligation to safeguard against it.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the intentional dissemination of false information.
Speaker 1: Okay, I should disclose that my firm is an investor
Speaker 1: in bteedance. I'm not personally an investor, but my firm
Speaker 1: did invest in it. So let me go on to
Speaker 1: another subject. Then, okay, so.
Speaker 3: What is you know?
Speaker 2: My answers would have stayed the same had I known
Speaker 2: that at the outset.
Speaker 1: People who are watching this, you would like to say
Speaker 1: to them that they are safer today in the United
Speaker 1: States than they were ten or twenty or thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: but we still have big risks.
Speaker 2: I would say the following. I would say, we are
Speaker 2: safer today than we were yesterday. The threat landscape is
Speaker 2: heightened and everyone needs to be vigilant because what we
Speaker 2: have observed. If one takes a look at the domestic
Speaker 2: violence that has occurred, whether it is the tragic shooting
Speaker 2: in Buffalo, New York, in the supermarket, whether it is
Speaker 2: the July fourth parade in a suburb of Chicago, whether
Speaker 2: it is Uvaldi, Texas. What we have learned earned is
Speaker 2: that the individuals, the assailants, we're exhibiting signs of radicalization
Speaker 2: to violence before they committed their heinous acts. And what
Speaker 2: we see something, say something campaign that Secretary of Neapolitano developed. Really,
Speaker 2: I think to the general public speaks of the abandoned
Speaker 2: backpack at a bus stop or in the airport, it
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily speak to the individual who is exhibiting signs
Speaker 2: that should cause us all to worry. And so the
Speaker 2: question is, and what we are building is an architecture
Speaker 2: where people understand what the ndisha are and know that
Speaker 2: what help they can call, because it's not to call
Speaker 2: the accountability regime, law enforcement because nothing has occurred yet,
Speaker 2: but to call a trusted source, whether it is a teacher,
Speaker 2: a faith leader, a mental health practitioner, to say, look,
Speaker 2: this individual is coming to school in a hazmat suit,
Speaker 2: or this individual has withdrawn from all social interaction and
Speaker 2: is communicating messages that speak of an interest in committing
Speaker 2: a violent act, who do I call? What outreach do
Speaker 2: I make to prevent something from materializing?
Speaker 3: So on the Secret Service.
Speaker 1: Recently, I think a candidate running for president, Robert Kennedy's
Speaker 1: father was assassinated. They didn't have Secret Service protection. Then
Speaker 1: he has asked for Secret Service protection as.
Speaker 3: In received that.
Speaker 1: Who makes a decision or who gets Secret Service protection
Speaker 1: when you're running for president?
Speaker 2: I do, And what we do is we have set
Speaker 2: up a process. We have a defined criteria in the process.
Speaker 2: The process provides for a bipartisan group of congressional leaders
Speaker 2: to make recommendations to me after they have analyzed the
Speaker 2: factors that we have established. This is a protocol that
Speaker 2: was established prior to the Trump administration, and so we
Speaker 2: resuscitated it.
Speaker 4: It is a political it.
Speaker 2: Is bipartisan, and the factors are a political and I
Speaker 2: have followed in each each instance the recommendation of the
Speaker 2: bipartisan group. There has been no light between or amongst us.
Speaker 1: When I worked in the White House one hundred years
Speaker 1: ago or so, it was a president and the vice
Speaker 1: president got Secrets Art protection as they do now. But
Speaker 1: it seems as if a lot of White House aids
Speaker 1: and other people have Secret Service protection. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's proliferated. I mean, how do you decide who gets it,
Speaker 1: if you're a White House AID or not.
Speaker 2: It is based on a threat assessment, and very sadly,
Speaker 2: the threat environment in which we are living is more acute.
Speaker 1: What about baseball owners, so they need secretary protection?
Speaker 3: You ever thought about that?
Speaker 2: You know, if I recall my reading of the standings
Speaker 2: circa this morning, you are safe and secure since you're
Speaker 2: resting in first place.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
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