Defiant after impeachment vote, Mayorkas tells the LA Times the effort 'does not rattle me'

WASHINGTON — This isn't the kind of history Alejandro Mayorkas wanted to make.

The son of immigrants who fled Cuba and settled in Beverly Hills when he was a child, Mayorkas was tapped in 2021 by President Biden to become the first Latino head of the nation's Homeland Security Department.

Decades earlier he made a reputation as the country's youngest U.S. Attorney in 1998, leading the Central District of California based in Los Angeles.

In recent months, however, Mayorkas, 64, has found himself in a far less flattering historical spotlight: targeted to become the first U.S. Cabinet official impeached in nearly 150 years.

"I knew I was entering an extraordinarily polarizing environment, an environment where norms were in jeopardy, where civility was not always respected," he said of his mindset when he became secretary. "I didn't assume this. It doesn't rattle me, though."

House Republicans, eyeing chaos at the border as a path to regain control of the White House and Senate, say Mayorkas' failure to prevent