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WASHINGTON – The United States Senate confirmed this Friday the activist Ur Mendoza Jaddou , of an Iraqi father and a Mexican mother, as director of the Citizenship and Immigration Agency (USCIS) , the agency that manages the immigration system and naturalization processes.
With a vote of 47 to 34, Mendoza Jaddou becomes the first person approved by the Senate since 2019 to run this agency, which has not had a confirmed leader in over two years.
When the approval was known, the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, congratulated Mendoza Jaddou, who highlighted his two decades of experience in laws, policies and administration of the immigration system.
“She will manage the system of immigration of our nation in a fair and equitable way, ”said Mayorkas on who will be a key piece to advance the immigration plans of President Joe Biden.
Mayorkas added that “as the daughter of working immigrants, Ur understands how immigrant families enrich our country and the challenges they face.”
Until her Nomination last April, Mendoza Jaddou had been director of DHS Watch, a project of the America’s Voice group that advocates for immigration reform, in addition to having experience at USCIS, where in the past she has worked in its legal services.
Under former President Donald Trump (2017 – 2021), USCIS implemented a series of changes that hampered the permanent residence for immigrants as well as the approval of their asylum applications.
The Trump administration also 1324098652 changed the naturalization test and proposed raising the fees for a large number of procedures, which was the subject of lawsuits.
The current Administration of President Joe Biden has revoked several of the measures implemented by his predecessor, but Mendoza Jaddou will have to deal with the backlog of asylum applications, whose processing in many states can now take years.
Mendoza will be in charge of a federal agency that has some 16, 700 employees, most of whom (13, 400) saw their positions threatened by lack of funds last year, according to what their managers said then.