WASHINGTON — A former top Los Angeles federal prosecutor who was involved in a Clinton-era clemency controversy has been tapped to head an influential Department of Homeland Security immigration agency.
Alejandro Mayorkas is President Obama's pick to be director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which adjudicates a broad range of immigration and naturalization issues and oversees international adoptions, asylum, refugee status and foreign student authorization.
"Alejandro's expertise covers a wide array of issues critical to the department, including law enforcement, civil rights, computer crime and international money laundering," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement Thursday.
Born in Cuba, Mayorkas was the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California from 1998 to 2001. He since has served as a litigation partner at the Los Angeles-based law firm O'Melveny and Myers, where he represents large corporations and other clients in high-profile cases here and overseas.
The White House noted in a statement that Mayorkas, who was on Obama's justice and law enforcement transition team, was named one of the 50 most influential minority lawyers in America by the National Law Journal.
Robert C. Bonner -- a former federal judge, U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and the first commissioner of Customs and Border Protection -- said Mayorkas had the skills to run the overburdened and underfunded agency, which will play a central role in the Obama administration's promised overhaul of U.S. immigration policy.
Among the proposed changes are a path to citizenship for as many as 12 million people living in the country illegally. That would place tremendous burdens on an immigration and citizenship agency already plagued by delays, processing backlogs and a lack of the modernized technology needed to keep pace with demand, Bonner said.
"Improving the capabilities of CIS is critical to dealing with immigration reform," said Bonner, who is now in private practice in Los Angeles. "I have the highest regard for Ali, who is the right person and at the right time to make CIS functional. He has the personal and management skills that will be needed for what is one of the most difficult jobs in Washington."
Mayorkas also was one of several prominent Southern California political figures who played a role in a 2001 decision by President Clinton to commute a drug dealer's prison sentence.
