Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's DHS pick, says the immigration system is "badly broken and we all know it."
"We must stop vilifying these communities," he said, while adding that there needs to be an immediate end to the "unjust treatment of immigrants."
"Immigration is a foundational part of who we are and who we have always been as Americans," Mayorkas says.
No news from Mayorkas in a very short speech, highlighting similar themes on immigration that Biden has already said in speeches.
Not sure if it was on purpose but Mayorkas cited the Statue of Liberty in his speech by saying: "On the base of the Statue of Liberty, it is written: that “from her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome.”
NEW: ICE investigators issued a subpoena this week demanding BuzzFeed News identify its sources — an extraordinary attempt by the government to interfere with a news outlet acting under the protections of the First Amendment.
The subpoena appears to be an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to track down the identities of people who provide information to news outlets.
"BuzzFeed News emphatically rejects any requests for information about possible sources and methods of our reporting,” said BuzzFeed News Editor-in-Chief Mark Schoofs.
NEW: Following a @BuzzFeedNews story documenting how ICE expelled 30+ unaccompanied children back to Guatemala after a federal judge blocked the controversial practice, ICE explains its side of the story in federal court to Judge Emmit Sullivan.
The filing confirms key facts.
The flight took off 10 minutes after the ruling & ICE officials left the children in Guatemala.
ICE officials say that their personnel on the ground were not aware of the injunction until after the children had been handed over to Guatemalan authorities.
NEW: The election of Joe Biden has been met with relief among many DHS employees who had been worried that Trump had done long-term damage to the agency’s reputation & feared what would come in a second term.
During his four years in office, Trump redefined the role of the Department of Homeland Security while instituting a series of restrictive measures unlike administrations before him.
Many DHS employees believed the agency had begun acting like an arm of the Trump campaign, as senior officials mimicked political talking points and declared that cities like Portland were “under siege.”
In multiple instances, guards who were supposed to observe detainees placed in solitary confinement for extra monitoring falsified records to hide apparent dereliction of duty.
In at least two cases — at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona and Adelanto Detention Facility in California — people died while they were not being watched but should have been.
Anonymous is the the former DHS chief of staff who was at the agency in key roles during family separation, the remain in Mexico program, the public charge program and so on.
Taylor has addressed the family separation issue but in a limited fashion. I've requested interviews with him on his role on immigration policy during his time in the administration:
“The idea that you could disassociate from a policy that consumed the entire department while you were deputy chief of staff is ridiculous,” the former official said."
NEW: Two controversial border programs were rife with issues, including families forced to remain in custody longer than appropriate, girls stuck in the same detention space w/ unrelated men, & toilets that had limited privacy, per leaked draft IG report.
“We found that CBP held many families together in large open cells in the El Paso [Central Processing Center] with no assurance of privacy or separation of juveniles from unrelated adults,” the report states. In one cell, two 14-year-old girls were held with nine unrelated men.
“Toilet stalls in the living area with waist-high partitions offered little privacy” and there was no “private space for nursing” despite there being mothers with infants.