The Man in the Arena

Theodore Roosevelt famously said: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually?in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Alejandro “Ali” Mayorkas is a man who has spent more than 20 years of his adult life in the arena of high stakes public service: 9 years as an Assistant United States Attorney; 2 years as the U.S. Attorney for Central District of California: 4 years as Director of U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services; 3 years as Deputy Secretary, and now more than 3 years as Secretary, of the Department of Homeland Security.? Few have ever engaged in worthy causes with greater enthusiasm and devotion than Ali Mayorkas.

?As the General Counsel of DHS from 2013 to 2017, I was privileged to spend over three years in the arena with Ali while he was serving as the Department’s Deputy Secretary.? Indeed, it was in no small part because of Ali’s example and encouragement that I decided to join DHS.?? Ali and I had been law partners a few years earlier.? In 2009, he was a former U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California with a successful private law practice at one of the top firms in Los Angeles.? The prior year he had been named one of the “50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America” by the National Law Journal.? He and his wife Tanya were raising two young daughters in Southern California.?

Some at the firm were surprised that a prominent former prosecutor and courtroom expert would relocate to Washington, D.C. to be the Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, a relatively obscure component of the Homeland Security Department.? Why take a massive pay cut and uproot your family to take a job that would do little to advance your legal practice down the road??

But for those who knew Ali well, it was not surprising.? His going to USCIS and the sacrifices it entailed for him and his family reflected the depth of his commitment to public service and to the values of gratitude, humility, and duty that were instilled in him by his parents, who were forced to flee Cuba with their infant son in1960 and found refuge and a new home in the United States.

Ali threw himself into the challenges of modernizing and strengthening USCIS.? And not surprisingly, as a former prosecutor, raised the priority of safeguarding the homeland and protecting the integrity of our legal immigration system, creating a new Directorate within CIS, the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate.? He subsequently became the Deputy Secretary of the Department, with a portfolio that spanned the entire range of the Department’s work, everything from protecting the country from terrorism, disrupting international drug cartels, strengthening cybersecurity, combatting illegal immigration, partnering with state and local law enforcement, negotiating security agreements with foreign countries, and much more.

For over three years, I worked with Ali on a daily basis. ?I was with him for early morning intelligence briefings and countless other meetings about counterterrorism, border security, and a diverse range of other high stakes homeland security issues. ?I visited the border with him.? And I often saw him late in the day -- he was regularly one of the last people to leave the building.? In all my dealings with him, he was smart, focused, and principled. ?

Ali is not just one of the most capable and dedicated public servants I have encountered. ?He is also one of the most decent human beings I know.? He is a servant leader. ?He shows respect to everyone. ?He genuinely cares about the people he leads and is constantly applauding their good efforts and praising them in public.? He is beloved by the people who work closely with him.

Public service for Ali has never been about the perks of office.? As Deputy Secretary, he declined home-to-work transportation in a big black SUV (which he was authorized to have), choosing instead to drive himself to work so he could drop his daughter off at school. ?After hours, I would occasionally find him at the copy machine.? He was about getting things done, and if that meant making his own copies after his support staff had gone home for the day, so be it.?

Being Homeland Security Secretary is one of the hardest and most thankless jobs in government.? Passionate policy disagreements and unfair political criticism come with the territory.? But we need the best and the brightest to step forward and take up Roosevelt’s call to strive valiantly and dare greatly in the service of our democratic institutions.? A baseless impeachment of an honest, hardworking, and decent public servant like Alejandro Mayorkas is more than just wrong and unfair, it makes our country weaker by discouraging promising future leaders from stepping into the arena at a time when we dearly need them.?

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Steve Bunnell

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