United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero and UFW Foundation Executive Director Diana Tellefson Torres issued the following statement on President-elect Joe Biden’s pick of Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS):

UFW & UFW Foundation applaud ‘historic’ Biden nomination of Mayorkas as first Latino head DHS

United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero and UFW Foundation Executive Director Diana Tellefson Torres issued the following statement on President-elect Joe Biden’s pick of Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS):

The United Farm Workers and UFW Foundation applaud President-Elect Biden’s historic nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas as the first Latino head of DHS.

The selection of Mayorkas, a Cuban American refugee, to lead DHS sends a strong, hopeful message to immigrants—that our broken immigration system must be fixed. Mayorkas was a key architect of DACA as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Obama and engaged with community-based organizations to successfully implement DACA. As deputy DHS secretary, also under President Obama, Mayorkas visited Fresno, Calif. to meet in person with Central Valley organizations working with farm workers and other low-income immigrants, including the UFW Foundation. His professional and personal experience makes him the right leader of an agency that has been poorly run and engaged in senseless cruelty against innocent migrants and immigrants over the last four years under Donald Trump.

The UFW and UFW Foundation look forward to the commonsense and humane immigration strategies Mayorkas will build to create an immigration system that is just and allows immigrants and the entire nation to thrive.

###