{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://web.archive.org/web/20140221043132/http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=47792", "Floor Speech of Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Nomination of Alejandro Mayorkis", "2013-12-17", "2013", "2013-12", "Republican", "House", "IA", "Charles Grassley", "G000386", "web.archive.org", null, null, "legacy", "Floor Speech of Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Nomination of Alejandro Mayorkis\u00a0Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa\nRanking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee\nOn the Nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas to be Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security  \n\n\u00a0\nI have major concerns with Mr. Mayorkas\u2019s nomination. First, I want to discuss how Mr. Mayorkas has carried out the President\u2019s directive giving legal status to thousands of individuals who are in the United States unlawfully. \u00a0 In 2012, Mr. Mayorkas was charged with implementing this President\u2019s directive, known as DACA.\u00a0 I have always questioned whether the President\u2019s directive is legal.\u00a0 The administration never responded to our request for their legal basis and opinions. This administration has not been transparent about who is getting deferred action, how they are processing them, and whether those who have been denied have been processed for removal. \u00a0 They may call this program \u201cDeferred Action for Childhood Arrivals\u201d but it clearly benefits older adults and possibly people who intentionally broke our laws.\u00a0 The agency didn\u2019t deny a single applicant until after the 2012 election.\u00a0 We still don\u2019t know how many people were actually denied.\u00a0 We do know, however, that people were approved despite shoddy evidence, such as an X-Box receipt and Facebook postings. They always seem to find a way to get an approval. And all denials for \u201cDACA\u201d have to be run through Washington.\u00a0 Adjudicators on the line were given clear instructions that they were not allowed to deny.\u00a0 Whistleblowers said that Mr. Mayorkas himself had to approve all denials. \u00a0 Think about that. No denial was allowed unless the head of the agency personally approved it.\u00a0 What kind of message does that send to the career employees trying to do their jobs impartially?\u00a0 The boss has his thumb on the scale. That isn\u2019t the rule of law. Mr. Mayorkas\u2019s message to adjudicators seems to have been that they had better \u201cget to a yes\u201d or he\u2019d personally get involved.\u00a0 This \u201cget to yes\u201d philosophy came up time and again with agency whistleblowers. \u00a0 The Office of Inspector General looked into the situation and confirmed what whistleblowers had said. A quarter of immigration service officers interviewed felt pressure to approve questionable applications.\u00a0 Ninety percent felt they didn\u2019t have sufficient time to complete interviews of those who seek benefits. \u00a0 The Office of Inspector General report clearly showed that the agency had been pervaded by the \u201cGet to Yes\u201d culture. \u00a0 Unfortunately, that culture hadn\u2019t changed under Mr. Mayorkas\u2019s leadership. In fact, based on concerns I heard from whistleblowers who contacted my office in mid-July of this year, it seems to have gotten worse. These whistleblowers were aware that Mr. Mayorkas had been nominated to this Homeland Security position in late June.\u00a0 They were also aware that since the fall of 2012, Mr. Mayorkas had been a subject of an Office of Inspector General investigation into allegations of ethical or criminal misconduct. When Mr. Mayorkas\u2019s nomination hearing was scheduled, the whistleblowers were surprised.\u00a0 They wondered why a hearing would proceed while the investigation was still open and pending, and contacted my office to make sure Congress was told about the investigation. \u00a0 The existence of an investigation was news to me.\u00a0 However, I don\u2019t sit on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.\u00a0 So, my staff contacted the staff of the Ranking Member of that Committee, Dr. Coburn.\u00a0 His staff was also unaware that the nominee was under investigation by the Inspector General. It is extremely troubling that a hearing was scheduled to proceed without the Ranking Member of the committee knowing about a pending investigation of the nominee within the Executive Branch. Both my staff and Ranking Member Coburn\u2019s staff contacted the Inspector General\u2019s office.\u00a0 We told his office about the whistleblower allegations and asked for confirmation as to whether there was an open inquiry.\u00a0 This type of procedural information is routinely disclosed by an Inspector General\u2019s office to Congress\u2014and rightly so.\u00a0 Further, we asked for an explanation of why that information would be withheld while the committee was considering the nomination. The Senate has a constitutional function of providing advice and consent on nominations.\u00a0 In order to do our duty, every Senator who is asked to vote on that nominee needs to have all the relevant information about that nominee, such as a pending investigation. To its credit, the Office of the Inspector General answered our questions and confirmed there was indeed an open criminal investigation.\u00a0 Their written description stated that the inquiry involves \u201calleged conflicts of interest, misuse of position, mismanagement of the EB-5 program, and an appearance of impropriety by Mayorkas and other ... management officials.\u201d How was it possible that this information was withheld from staff for the Ranking Member of the committee considering the nomination? If not for the whistleblowers, would we have known? When a nominee is under investigation, the Senate has no business approving that nominee until the facts are in.\u00a0 Historically, committees have followed this precedent.\u00a0 As Ranking Member Coburn explained last week, both the President and the Vice President supported this precedent when they were in the Senate.\u00a0 In July 2005, one ambassadorial nominee owned a company under investigation.\u00a0 Then-Senator Biden spoke out in support of delaying voting on the nomination because of the investigations.\u00a0 Eventually the nominee\u2019s company agreed to settle the investigations against it.\u00a0 Then-Senator Obama\u2019s spokesman issued a statement saying that due to the fact that a settlement was reached, Senator Obama would not seek to block the nomination.\u00a0 Like then-Senators Obama and Biden, I believe the the Senate should wait for investigations to conclude. Or, if the Executive Branch is taking too long, then Congress should do its own fact finding. But, forcing Senators to vote in ignorance is not a legitimate option. It is irresponsible. Voting to approve a nominee who is under investigation without waiting for the facts is incredibly risky.\u00a0 What if the investigation determines that the allegations are true?\u00a0 Then by rushing to approve the nominee, this body would have failed in one of our key functions under the Constitution. \u00a0 I pointed this out when the Senate was considering the nomination of B. Todd Jones to become the permanent head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.\u00a0 Mr. Jones was the subject of an Office of Special Counsel investigation due to allegations that he retaliated against a whistleblower in the U.S. Attorney\u2019s office in Minnesota. \u00a0 As Mr. Jones\u2019s nomination progressed in the Senate, the Justice Department and the whistleblower agreed to try mediation.\u00a0 The Majority tried to claim that the Special Counsel\u2019s case was therefore closed.\u00a0 However, as I stated on this floor, the Special Counsel\u2019s investigation would continue if the mediation failed.\u00a0 Nevertheless, despite the open Special Counsel investigation, we voted on July 31 to confirm Mr. Jones. In early September, the whistleblower\u2019s mediation with the Justice Department did indeed fail.\u00a0 The Special Counsel has resumed its investigation of Mr. Jones, just as the Special Counsel had told the Senate that it would.\u00a0 So, the retaliation complaint against Mr. Jones is still pending today.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know what the outcome will be because we did not take the time to gather the facts as senators should. If we are unwilling to wait for an Executive Branch inquiry, then we should gather the facts ourselves. Last week, Ranking Member Coburn asked Chairman Levin if the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations would consider interviewing witnesses in the controversy involving Mr. Mayorkas.\u00a0 While he declined, Chairman Levin rightly noted that if the subcommittee were going to launch such an investigation, the vote on Mr. Mayorkas would need to be delayed. I completely agree. This vote should not take place until someone has been able to gather testimony and draw conclusions about the allegations. Whistleblowers have provided my office with very troubling evidence regarding the substance of some of the allegations.\u00a0 Much of the evidence involves the EB-5 regional center program, which Mr. Mayorkas is responsible for managing.\u00a0 The evidence appears to support allegations that Mr. Mayorkas and his leadership team at Citizenship and Immigration Services are susceptible to political pressure and favoritism.\u00a0 Our immigration system should be governed by equal application of the law\u2014not by who has the best political connections to the director of the agency. I have given Mr. Mayorkas a chance to defend himself and explain the evidence, which seems compelling.\u00a0 Back in July and August, I wrote several letters to Mr. Mayorkas outlining whistleblowers\u2019 allegations and attaching some of the documents they provided.\u00a0 I asked how he accounted for this evidence.\u00a0 But, he has utterly failed to reply to my letters. \u00a0 It\u2019s been four or five months since I sent Mr. Mayorkas these letters. Just like his personal oversight of DACA, these documents show Mr. Mayorkas being much more directly involved in individual EB-5 cases than he had led my staff or the Homeland Security Committee to believe.\u00a0 They appear to show him intervening in an EB-5 decision involving Gulf Coast Funds Management, an organization run by Hillary Clinton\u2019s brother, Anthony Rodham.\u00a0 This decision benefited GreenTech Automotive, a company run by Terry McAuliffe that was receiving funding from Gulf Coast Funds Management. This evidence about political influence and intervention is particularly troubling because of Mr. Mayorkas\u2019s prior history.\u00a0 In 2001 Mr. Mayorkas had a role in the group of pardons and commutations issued by President Clinton at the end of his second term.\u00a0 A 2002 House report found that then-U.S. Attorney Mayorkas inappropriately sought to influence a decision regarding whether drug trafficker Carlos Vignali\u2019s prison sentence should be commuted. However, my concerns about the investigation pending against Mr. Mayorkas are about more than just improper political influence. Under his leadership over the last few years, the EB-5 program has grown far beyond its original intent, which I supported.\u00a0 It is intended to be an avenue for foreign investors to participate in new commercial enterprises that create jobs in the United States in exchange for a U.S. visa.\u00a0 The program was created as a pilot, allowing regional centers to pool funds from investors to create new businesses.\u00a0 In the process, the centers had to prove they were creating U.S. jobs. \u00a0 Skeptics question if the program truly creates jobs. Whistleblowers have expressed concerns that foreign investors are not being vetted carefully enough. \u00a0 They say Mr. Mayorkas is more interested in approving applications quickly than making security checks more robust. \u00a0 Given what we know now about these security concerns inside the agency, Congress needs to re-examine the program.\u00a0 It should serve its purpose without compromising national security. Mr. Mayorkas claims that he has changed the program since learning of the fraud and security concerns.\u00a0 The only tangible change we have seen is that additional economists have been hired and adjudicators from California were moved to Washington, D.C.\u00a0 Yet moving the EB-5 process to Washington increased Mr. Mayorkas\u2019s control over the program, just as he has in the DACA program. Whistleblowers have provided me with emails from Mr. Mayorkas saying that he wants to keep fraud and national security concerns about GreenTech or the SLS Hotel in Las Vegas \u201cclose hold.\u201d\u00a0 As I said earlier, the rule of law isn\u2019t possible when the boss has his thumb on the scale. Further, the regional center program has serious national security risks that the Director hasn\u2019t addressed. \u00a0 He convened a working group with national security advisors, but no formal product was finalized.\u00a0 The inter-agency collaborations seemed to fizzle.\u00a0 Whistleblowers say the whole working group was mere window dressing. In the agency, employees received EB-5 applications from individuals with derogatory information about them in classified government files.\u00a0 But, they were given little or no guidance about how to make sure that such were denied.\u00a0 Instead, they were pressured to approve applications as quickly as possible.\u00a0 Simply put, the integrity of our immigration system is in question as long as the program continues without needed reforms, which could be done today. On May 15, 2012, Chairman Leahy and I wrote to Mr. Mayorkas regarding the program and expressed our concerns about the potential for abuse of the program. We asked for his commitment to administratively reform two aspects of the program.\u00a0 He responded that he was interested in the reforms, yet it has been 19 months and he has taken no action. Mr. Mayorkas says he\u2019s concerned with fraud and abuse in the program, but actions speak louder than words.\u00a0 Despite my recent letters with questions about fraud and security concerns, not to mention political influence, Mr. Mayorkas is either completely unwilling or unable to respond to the allegations. I sat down with Chairman Carper on August 1, and he agreed that I deserve answers to my questions from the nominee.\u00a0 But, now he has pressed forward without getting answers.\u00a0 I am truly surprised that this Majority is not interested in getting to the bottom of these allegations. If this body is unwilling to await until the end of an investigation or conduct its own inquiry, one day it will come back to bite us. As I said when B. Todd Jones was confirmed, eventually one of these situations will embarrass the Senate and damage the reputation of the federal government. If this Majority is determined to ignore ongoing investigations and ram through nominees, the American people should hold the Senate accountable for refusing to do its constitutional job.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://web.archive.org/web/20140221043132/http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=47792"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7295699324458838, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}