Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas (born November 24, 1959, in Havana, Cuba) is the seventh Secretary of Homeland Security, serving from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden, and previously served as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2016. He is the first Latino and immigrant to hold the position of Secretary of Homeland Security. Mayorkas comes from a Jewish family; his mother was a Romanian Jewish immigrant who fled Europe during the Holocaust and settled in Cuba before the family fled as political refugees after Fidel Castro's rise to power, eventually settling in California. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in history with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Juris Doctor from Loyola Marymount University School of Law in 1985. He began his legal career as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California, specializing in white-collar crime, and became the youngest U.S. Attorney in the nation for that district in 1998 at age 38. A member of the Democratic Party, he also served as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2009 to 2013, implementing initiatives like the Citizenship Awareness program and humanitarian efforts for Haitian earthquake orphans. As Secretary, he managed immigration enforcement, cybersecurity, and national security threats, though his tenure faced controversies including impeachment attempts by House Republicans in 2024, which were dismissed by the Senate. He is married to Tanya Mayorkas and has two children.