Biden Choses Alejandro Mayorkas As His Secretary Of Homeland Security

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas to head the Department of Homeland Security, tapping the Cuban American to reverse President Trump's hard-line immigration policies.

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If confirmed, Alejandro Mayorkas would be the first Latino and the first immigrant to become secretary of Homeland Security. The Biden transition team announced his nomination today. He'd be taking on a big job, leading a sprawling department that's charged with protecting the president, airport screening and cybersecurity. But the biggest change is likely to be how the department handles immigration and border security. NPR's Joel Rose covers immigration. He joins us now.

Joel, what else can you tell us about his background?

JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Well, he's a veteran of the Obama administration, a former deputy secretary at DHS, also a former federal prosecutor in California, where he grew up. As you said, he is an immigrant - born in Cuba. His parents fled the communist regime to the U.S. when he was very young. Here is Mayorkas a few years ago talking about how that shaped his life.

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: I'm a political refugee, and my identity as a political refugee was extraordinarily important to my upbringing. And my parents were very focused on instilling in me a deep sense of what it means and what it meant to be an individual displaced from one's home.

ROSE: So this nomination already marks a symbolic shift away from the Trump administration, which drastically cut the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and regularly portrayed refugees and asylum-seekers as a burden and threat.