david: this is, uh, my kitchen table, and it's also my filing system. over much of the past three decades, i have been an investor. the highest calling of mankind, i've often thought, was private equity. [laughter] and then i started interviewing. i watched your interviews, so i know how to do some interviews. i've learned from doing my interviews how leaders make it to the top. jeff: i asked him how much he wanted. he said $250. i said, fine. i didn't negotiate with him. i did no due diligence. david: i have something i would like to sell. [laughter] and how they stay there. you don't feel inadequate now because being only the second wealthiest man in the world, is that right? [laughter] alejandro mayorkas is the secretary of homeland security, and department created after 9/11. alejandro mayorkas oversees border security, a top issue for certain in the next election.

recently, i had a chance to sit down with alejandra mayorkas, an immigrant from cuba, to talk about issues facing his department, including the challenges from tiktok. let me talk about the elephant in the room. you are the second secretary in the history of our country to be impeached. what was it like living through that impeachment process, and is it finally over now? sec. mayorkas: to the best of my knowledge, it's over. quite frankly, i have said a number of times that i did not allow me -- allow it to distract me. that was actually sincere. i focused intensely on my work throughout. in a week where it was an issue of greater prominence in the life of the department, i might have spent 20 minutes on it. i really just focused on my

work. it had its impact on love ones. david: so it is behind us now. as rogers once said, the country is never safe as long as they house is in session, right? so you never know, but it may never come back, right? sec. mayorkas: one would hope not. david: let us talk about the border. it appears there are a lot of people coming in over the border. this is obviously one of the subjects that some people want to impeach you over. is it that we are getting more people coming in over the border illegally or just the appearance of that? sec. mayorkas: oh, no, the number of encounters at the southern border is very high, but it's very, very important, number one, to contextualize it and number two, to explain it. from a context perspective, the world is seeing the greatest level of displacement since at least world war ii. a recent report was that there's 73 million displaced people in

the united states. the challenge of migration is not exclusive to the southern border, nor to the western hemisphere. it is global. when i speak to partners across the atlantic, it's the first issue that they raised. david: what are you doing for that? sec. mayorkas: one has the customary reasons for displacement -- violence, insecurity, poverty, corruption, authoritarian regimes. now, increasingly, extreme weather events that propel people to leave. why are we experiencing what we are? it is for those very reasons why people leave their countries of origin. we also remember in r hemisphere -- we overcame covid more rapidly than any other country. we had in a post-covid world 11

million jobs to fill. we are a country of choice as a destination. one takes those two forces and then one considers the fact that we have an immigration system that is broken fundamentally, and we have a level of encounters. when we speak of a broken system, let me capture that as simply as i can. the average time between encounter and the point of final adjudication of an asylum claim is seven plus years. approximately 70% of the people who made an initial threshold for asylum, credible fear standard, about 70% qualify, so they stay for seven plus years, and the ultimate adjudication, about 20% qualify. david: in our country, if

somebody seeks political asylum and legitimately need political asylum, is it our law that they automatically get it if they have legitimate means? there's no quarters or anything like that? -- there's no progress -- there's no quotas or anything like that? sec. mayorkas: there is no quota on asylum. david: how many people would you say since you have been sec. have come in over the southern border, let say, illegally? seeking asylum, bringing drugs, whatever they are doing? sec. mayorkas: i do want to differentiate because we are in a political environment that demonizes individuals encountered at the border. there is a vulnerability to painting with a broad brush people who are fleeing and coming to the united states. i want to separate, and i will

be incessant in this, separate drug smugglers from individuals seeking asylum or even if they don't have a basis to remain in the united states, seeking a better life. the number of encounters have been very well published. this past month, we had about 134 thousand encounters. david: let's say since the beginning of the administration, is it millions of people? sec. mayorkas: it is several million people. david: there was legislation developed in the senate, bipartisan legislation, and it got stalled in the house. without have solved that problem had it passed? dashwood that have solved that problem -- would that have solved that problem? sec. mayorkas: it would have been transformative. we would have taken a seven plus-year time period between time of encounter and final adjudication and reduced it to

as little as 90 days. that changes and intending migrant's risk calculus. if they know they can stay for multiple years and work and make more money than they can than in their country of origin, they will decide to make that journey. if they understand that they have to pay their life savings to a smuggling organization only to stay for a matter of weeks, that is a very different risk calculus. the world of migration has changed dramatically over the last even 15 years. we are not dealing with the coyotes that i dealt with as a federal prosecutor where they smuggled 2, 3 people at a time. we are dealing with extraordinarily sophisticated smuggling organizations in a multibillion dollar industry that is also international. david: is that industry one designed to bring drugs into the united states or get people into

the u.s. for which they get a fee? sec. mayorkas: it is the latter, but it should be unsurprising to everyone that we are seeing not quite a merger -- i would say i synthesis of transnational criminal organizations and smuggling organizations, there is so much money to be made. david: people who are now coming over, are we separating families ? under the trump administration, there was a lot of controversy. children were being separated from parents. is that happening now? sec. mayorkas: no, that was a deliberate practice to deter families from reaching the southern border. that was condemned across the board. cruelty is not something that is an instrument of a value-based country, and we eliminated that practice. it actually was eliminated, in

all fairness, towards the end of the trump administration. we issued a policy preventing it, and the president created a family reunification task force that i chaired that is actually reuniting separated families. david: president trump, campaigned on creating a wall and i guess some part of the wall was built, but would not a well have helped somewhat? would that have not block people from coming? even though people like to make fun of a wall, would it not have had some impact? sec. mayorkas: in the 21st century, i would not necessarily propose cementing pollard's on the ground and constructing an immovable wall given the dynamism and rapid change in migratory patterns, but i just have to quote secretary napolitano. when you build a 20-foot wall,

they will build a 21-foot ladder. ♪

david: let's talk about your background. you don't come to the cabinet with conventional background of many people who have this position. where were you born? sec. mayorkas: i was born in havana, cuba. david: really? at what age did you leave? sec. mayorkas: my parents brought my sister and me to the united states as political refugees when i was about one. sec. mayorkas: did they come -- david: did they come in legally or illegally? sec. mayorkas: they came in legally. my father was a bit prescient. we did not leave early but we left early enough. david: there is not that big a cuban or was not that big a cuban jewish community, but your mother and father were both jewish. your father was how hard it, and his ancestors came from? sec. mayorkas: his father was

from turkey. david: your mother was eskenazi jewish? sec. mayorkas: my mother fled from romania to france, from france to cuba. she lost family in the concentration camps. they left so that they could not get to israel and our policies at that time were not as welcoming as one would have hoped at a time of great human distress. david: so they came to the united states legally. where did they come? sec. mayorkas: we arrived in miami and lived in miami until my father found a better work opportunity in los angeles, california. david: you grew up in los angeles? sec. mayorkas: i grew up for most of my life in los angeles. david: and you speak spanish fluently? sec. mayorkas: i speak it. my grammar is not something that i take great pride in.

david: where did you go to high school? sec. mayorkas: i went to beverly hills high school. david: a lot of movie stars' kids and things like that? sec. mayorkas: would you consider jack abramoff a movie star? i don't recall a lot of movie stars. when everyone hears beverly hills high school, they think of the clampett family. there were 4 elementary schools that fed into the high school. two tended to be of more affluent community, and the other two were, quite frankly, modest. i grew up in a lower middle-class to middle-class home, never wanting for anything . and incredibly close family. david: you have siblings? sec. mayorkas: i have three siblings. david: are they interested in homeland security or not so much? sec. mayorkas: they are probably recent devotees. david: where did you go to college? sec. mayorkas: i went to university of california

berkeley. david: then you went to law school in los angeles? sec. mayorkas: loyola law school. david: you graduated law school and what did you do? sec. mayorkas: i went into a law firm. i wanted to go into public service. this country has given my family everything and i very much wanted to give back. i wanted to go into public service and i had my eyes on the united states attorney's office in los angeles. they required three years of experience, so i gained three years of experience at a private law firm and went into the u.s. attorney's office. david: you went in there as a federal prosecutor and were assistant u.s. attorney in los angeles? sec. mayorkas: for eight and a half years, specializing in sophisticate fraud cases. david: did you get involved in the campaign when barack obama ran for president? were you involved in any way? sec. mayorkas: i was. i let the criminal division of the department of justice transition team. david: you took a position initially. sec. mayorkas: the position was

the director of u.s. citizenship and immigration services, an agency within the department that administers legal immigration systems. david: after that, you got promoted to be the deputy homeland secretary under janet napolitano. sec. mayorkas: yes. david: that did not convince you that this is a complicated area and you should not want to come back as secretary? sec. mayorkas: complicated, difficult, challenging, and extraordinarily fulfilling. david: so you go back after president obama leaves office. in what city? sec. mayorkas: here in washington, d.c. david: you are a partner. how did you get connected to the biden administration? did they remember you? they call you up and said guess what, we like you as deputy, now you can be sec.? sec. mayorkas: i would not say it was in that way, but i was

extraordinarily proud to be contacted by the incoming president, the president-elect to be considered for the secretary. david: did your family say you are making a lot of money here, you are way up here in compensation and you are going to go down here again? that was a factor? sec. mayorkas: no. david: they did not care, ok. sec. mayorkas: "didn't care" would be -- it is what it is. david: how many people work at the department of homeland security? sec. mayorkas: about 260,000. we are the third-largest apartment in federal government. david: what are the main parts of it? what are your main divisions? sec. mayorkas: the expanse of our portfolio is extraordinary, from online child sexual exploitation -- that is crimes of exploitation, human trafficking -- two facilitating lawful trade when you travel to

search-and-rescue and security in the arctic and indo pacific, to addressing the flooding yesterday and today in houston, texas, where we have a number of fatalities. and the frequency or gravity of extreme weather events is only growing. the cyberattacks from china, russia, iran, north korea, it is extraordinary. david: do you ever get a weekend off where you don't have to worry about some crisis or other? sec. mayorkas: my goal is to take half a saturday. david: why is the first amendment not protecting tiktok? sec. mayorkas: it is not, to me, an issue of the first amendment. it is an issue of security. ♪

david: a number of people, i think, from homeland security/or

the cia or nsa have gone on capitol hill and said that tiktok is a danger to national security, but the public has not been given that much information about what the threat is. how much of a threat to our national security is tiktok? sec. mayorkas: the people's republic of china acts adversely to the interests of the united states through different ways. one of those ways is through the dissemination of disinformation, the intentional communication of false statements, and tiktok is an extraordinary avenue through which to disseminate disinformation to millions and millions of people. david: but newspapers kind of disseminate misinformation. why is it if it is over social media, it has got to be banned? if a newspaper says the same

things, it would not be banned because of the first amendment. why is the first amendment not protecting tiktok and social media? sec. mayorkas: it is not, to me, an issue of the first amendment. it is an issue of security. we are talking about a company and an algorithm that is controlled by a foreign state that acts adversely to the interests of the united states, and we have an obligation to protect americans. david: but the presumption is that people are not smart enough to know that it is disinformation and cannot make the decision for themselves. is that right? sec. mayorkas: we are talking about many, many young people that access tiktok. i would posit that in this country, we don't have the level of digital literacy that i think we would all want. we are all vulnerable to disinformation, and the reality

is that we have an obligation to safeguard against it. we are talking about the intentional dissemination of false information. david: i should disclose that my firm is an investor in bytedance. i'm not personally an investor, but my firm did invest in it. let me go on to another subject then. sec. mayorkas: my answers would have stayed the same had i known that at the outset. david: people are watching this. you would like to say to them that they are sacred today in the united states than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but we still have big risks? sec. mayorkas: i would say the following -- i would say we are safer today than we were yesterday. the threat landscape is heightened, and everyone needs to be vigilant because what we have observed -- if one takes a look at the domestic violence that has occurred, if it is the tragic shooting in buffalo, new york, in the supermarket, if it

is the july 4 parade in a suburb of chicago, if it is uvalde, texas, what we have learned is that the individuals, the assailants were exhibiting signs of radicalization to violence before they committed their heinous acts. the see something, say something campaign that secretary napolitano developed, really, i think, to the general public speaks of the abandoned backpack at a bus stop over the airport. it does not necessarily speak to the individual who is exhibiting signs that should cause us all to worry. the question is that with what we are building is an architecture where people understand and know what help

they can call because it is not to call the accountability regime or law enforcement because nothing has occurred yet, but to call a trusted source. if it's a teacher, faith leader, mental health practitioner, and say, look, this individual is coming to school in a hazmat suit or this individual has withdrawn from all social interaction and is communicating messages that speak of an interest in committing a violent act. who do i call? what outreach do i make to prevent something from materializing? david: on the secret, recently, a candidate running for president, robert kennedy's father ran for president. they did not have secret service

then. he was killed. who makes the determination who gets secret service protection? sec. mayorkas: i do. we have a process. we have defined criteria, and the process provides for a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to make recommendations to me after they have analyzed the factors that we have established. this is a protocol that was established prior to the trump administration, and so we resuscitated it. it is apolitical. it is bipartisan. the factors are apolitical. i followed in each instance the recommendation of the bipartisan group. there has been no light between or amongst us. david: when i worked in the white house 100 years ago or so, it was the president and vice president got secret service

protection. sec. mayorkas: as they do now. david: it seems a lot of white house aides and upper people have secret service protection. it seems it has proliferated. how do you decide who gets it? if you are a white house aide or not? sec. mayorkas: it is based on a threat assessment, and very sadly, the threat environment in which we are living is more acute. david: what about baseball owners? do they need secret service protection? have you ever thought about that? sec. mayorkas: circa this morning, you are safe and secure since you are investing in first place. -- you are resting in first place. ♪

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