WASHINGTON – In a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee to be Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and current Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Senator Chuck Grassley asked the Director to explain how his recent testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee squares with documents that appear to contradict the testimony.
Several whistleblowers have alerted Grassley to problems with the management of the EB-5 program as well as the personal involvement of Mayorkas in the approval of some applications and the alleged re-writing of administrative decisions to benefit certain applicants.
In a letter earlier this week, Grassley asked Mayorkas to explain why documents and emails he had received seem to contradict testimony he gave on July 25th to the Senate committee. At issue is the personal involvement of Mayorkas into EB-5 applications from Gulf Coast Funds Management/GreenTech Automotive, including multiple contacts between high-level Department of Homeland Security officials and Gulf Coast/GreenTech personnel as well as the alleged rewriting of part of a USCIS Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) decision regarding Gulf Coast/GreenTech. The re-write allowed dozens of investor visa applications from Gulf Coast/GreenTech to be approved by USCIS.
In his letter, Grassley also included documents indicating that GreenTech is under investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Grassley sent a letter to the SEC on July 24th asking questions about a possible forensic assessment.
“This extensive documentary record appears to be at odds with your claims that you do not involve yourself in individual cases and that the one meeting you acknowledged with Mr. McAuliffe was ‘the extent of the interaction.’ In fact, it appears that you inserted yourself into the AAO process in an unusual way by reviewing and allegedly rewriting a draft AAO opinion to benefit Gulf Coast and GreenTech. At a minimum, you clearly created the impression among senior career staff that you were giving special treatment to these applicants,” Grassley wrote in his letter.
The letter cites an internal email from one such senior employee who wrote: “We absolutely gave special treatment to GreenTech at the directive of [Director Mayorkas]. [He] was working directly with the [Regional Center]’s atty . . . . Additionally, I would call a wholesale rewrite of the AAO’s decision by the front office special treatment.”
A copy of the letter and the attached documents can be found here. Grassley’s July 24th letter to the SEC can be found here.
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