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Alejandro N. Mayorkas

Alejandro N. Mayorkas

Secretary of Homeland Security

Appears in 4 stories

Notable Quotes

The existing random selection process has often been criticized for allowing unscrupulous employers to exploit it by flooding the selection pool with lower-skilled foreign workers paid at low wages.

“These new processes promote family unity and provide lawful pathways…” — Alejandro Mayorkas, July 2023

'The living conditions in Venezuela reveal a country in turmoil, unable to protect its own citizens. It is in times of extraordinary and temporary circumstances like these that the United States steps forward.'

Stories

The end of the H-1B lottery

Rule Changes

Finalized wage-weighted H-1B rule December 2025

On December 29, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security published its final rule replacing the H-1B lottery with wage-weighted selection. It takes effect February 27, 2026.

Updated 1 hour ago

DHS pulls the plug on family reunification parole—a legal pathway turns into a 30-day countdown

Rule Changes

Architect of the 2023 FRP expansion later terminated

DHS just turned a promised “legal pathway” into a ticking clock. A Federal Register notice published December 15, 2025 terminates every Family Reunification Parole program tied to seven countries—and tells people already here that their parole will end on January 14, 2026.

Updated Yesterday

Trump administration's Venezuelan TPS termination faces legal gauntlet

Rule Changes

No longer in government

Venezuela first received Temporary Protected Status in 2021, shielding hundreds of thousands of its nationals from deportation. In January 2025, newly appointed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to terminate that protection within days of taking office—an action that two federal courts have now ruled exceeded her statutory authority. On February 3, 2026, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. issued a parallel ruling blocking Noem's termination of Haitian TPS using nearly identical legal reasoning, finding 'substantial' likelihood the decision was motivated by 'hostility to nonwhite immigrants.' The pattern has since expanded: in December 2025, another federal judge blocked terminations for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua on similar grounds, and in November 2025, a New York judge halted the Syria termination. Yet despite these rulings, the Supreme Court has repeatedly stayed lower court orders, allowing terminations to proceed while litigation continues.

Updated Feb 26

The five-year journey of Trump's pandemic asylum ban

Rule Changes

Left office January 2025 after four contentious years leading DHS

A Trump-era rule takes effect December 31, 2025, allowing immigration officials to deny asylum to anyone deemed a security threat because of communicable diseases during public health emergencies. Originally published in December 2020 and scheduled to go live three weeks later, the rule was delayed five times by Biden's DHS but never killed. Now it becomes law under Trump's second term, despite no active pandemic.

Updated Dec 31, 2025