Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas attends an interagency brief at FEMA Headquarters to discuss response and recovery efforts for Hurricane Fiona and Typhoon Merbok. President Joseph R. Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico on Sunday, authorizing FEMA to continues to coordinate all disaster relief efforts while providing lifesaving and life-sustaining support. (Lameen Witter/FEMA)
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas leaves office as one of President Joe Biden’s most controversial Cabinet officials, but a little-known accomplishment inside the agency could have lasting impact.
While hot-button immigration polemics shadowed his four years leading the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), culminating in a failed, performative Republican attempt to remove him from office, Mayorkas (Ali to his friends) can take pride from his notable improvements in employee morale - a key element in organizational performance.
Now comes this question: Will that trend continue after President-elect Donald Trump takes office Monday? His first term demonstrated, by word and deed, his disdain for federal employees. He undermined federal workplace protections and slashed the ability of federal unions to represent employees with executive orders that Biden promptly reversed.
Mayorkas, a Havana-born political refugee, first served as Homeland Security’s deputy secretary and its Citizenship and Immigration Services director during the Obama administration. When he became secretary in 2021, he decided his “number one organizational priority was investing in our workforce, identifying their needs and addressing those needs.”
Mayorkas spoke in his office on the department’s sprawling campus in Southeast D.C. on Tuesday, less than a week before Trump’s inauguration. That location provides a panoramic view of majestic Washington, with the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol framing the scene.
Yet the commanding surroundings didn’t stop the department, cobbled from 22 agencies 22 years ago, from suffering pathetic workforce engagement ratings among its quarter-million staffers.
Boosting morale might not mean much to the House Republicans who last year impeached Mayorkas, despite bipartisan opposition. The Democratically led Senate quickly dispatched two articles of impeachment, over immigration practices, because partisan policy disputes are not high crimes and misdemeanors.
While Mayorkas’s reputation can’t escape notice as only the second Cabinet member impeached - no matter how specious that effort might have been - his name also should be positively linked to the often unnoticed work that better defines the department’s ability to keep the homeland secure. (Secretary of War William Belknap was the first to be impeached in 1876. He was found not guilty.)
“I really think that Ali Mayorkas deserves real credit for doing something remarkable and that so few Cabinet secretaries ever do, which is focus real energy on trying to improve morale,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, which studies federal agencies. “And he succeeded.”
The Partnership produces the annual “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” reports. The latest one released in 2024 shows DHS ranking a meager 14 out of 17 in the large agency category.
Is that success?
Remaining so close to the gutter doesn’t sound like much, but compared with where DHS was for its previous years, Stier said, “it’s quite significant.”
One indication of that improvement is the employee “engagement and satisfaction score,” which reflects answers to workplace satisfaction questions in the government’s 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The DHS rating was 60.8, six points higher than the year before and just slightly lower than the department’s highest in 2020, under Trump. But then, the department ranked last among 17 agencies.
Moving up six points is harder than it might seem. That’s about 2.5 times greater than the government-wide average increase. Stier likened “moving the giant agency” to “moving the proverbial battleship. It takes enormous amount of energy and work.” Improving morale and employee engagement, he hastened to add, “is not about employee happiness. This is fundamentally about the service that Americans receive from their government. It’s true of the private sector and in the public sector, that the best way to improve customer service is to improve employee experience.”
Those employees are “totally focused on the mission,” Mayorkas said. “They get the job done. … It’s our job to make sure that they are recognized and they know that they are appreciated and that we hear them and that we respond to them.”
DHS said that response includes:
- Supporting pay equity for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screeners, so they are on par with other federal employees.
- Conducting the Annual Secretary’s Awards ceremonies at regional offices around the country instead of in Washington. That led to more employees being recognized and greater interaction between top leadership and distant staffers.
- Instituting “the first increase in Border Patrol staffing in over a decade with 300 additional Agents added in Fiscal Year 2023, and another 1,400 added in Fiscal Year 2024.”
- Improving department workplaces, including, according to Mayorkas, a “horrible” Florida facility, with “terrible” lighting, “unacceptable” restrooms and internet with “very weak connectivity … They called it somewhat affectionately, somewhat affectionally, the house of pain.”
Doreen P. Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) that represents some DHS workers, said they “benefited from Secretary Mayorkas’ understanding of the importance of employee morale, resiliency and work-life balance,” and praised him for working “to provide employees with additional health and safety resources.”
To continue that under Trump’s pick for DHS secretary, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, Mayorkas has these words of advice: “The incoming team needs to keep at it. And it’s not about quick fixes … for the sake of a rating. It’s also investing, planting the seeds, tilling the soil, watering, doing the hard work that will yield results for the workforce. Maybe not tomorrow, but maybe a year from tomorrow. It’s about the institution and their well-being. It’s not about Band-Aids.”
