Mayorkas plans exit from DHS

One of the leading champions of public/private cybersecurity information sharing is leaving the Department of Homeland Security at the end of October.

Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will depart on Oct. 28, according to a department statement. Undersecretary for Management Russell Deyo will serve as acting deputy secretary.

Mayorkas has been a vocal advocate of the department's efforts to encourage the private sector to share cybersecurity information with the government and vice versa.

He has been in his current position for almost three years. Previously, he was director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. While at USCIS, he became a political lightning rod for the Obama administration when he managed the agency's EB-5 visa program, which allows foreigners to receive a green card if they invest money in a commercial enterprise in the U.S. or create jobs in the country.

A 2015 Office of Inspector General report states that while Mayorkas was at USCIS, he exerted "improper influence" in EB-5 processing for green cards for some wealthy foreign entrepreneurs involved in U.S. projects tied to current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton's brother.

Mayorkas also helped prepare USCIS for the flood of new data expected under the Obama administration's 2012 Dreamer program, which lifted the threat of deportation from undocumented students who had been brought to the U.S. by their parents as minors.

He moved into DHS' top management in 2013 as deputy secretary and has been an advocate for the agency's automated information-sharing structure that sends and receives cyberthreat indicators in near-real time to help the government and industry prevent cyber intrusions.

In a statement, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson praised Mayorkas for leading the agency's Unity of Effort campaign, designed to harmonize the approach to procurement across DHS agencies.

"Over the last 34 months, Ali has spearheaded much of our Unity of Effort campaign and employee engagement initiatives and has taken a leading role on issues ranging from immigration to cybersecurity," Johnson said. "His legacy as deputy secretary will be the number of things we did to improve how this Department functions and the significant increase in employee satisfaction we saw this year as a result."