DHSCandidate for DHS deputy secretary under IG investigation

Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has been named by the DHS Inspector General (IG) office as a target in an investigation of the foreign investor program run by the USCIS.

Mayorkas is President Obama’s choice for the deputy secretary post at DHS.

If Mayorkas is confirmed as deputy secretary, he would most likely serve as acting secretary of DHS until a full-time replacement for Janet Napolitano is confirmed.

The Washington Post reports that the IG office sent an e-mail to lawmakers Monday saying the  office began an investigation into the EB-5 visa program last year as a result of a referral from an FBI analyst in the counterintelligence unit in Washington. The e-mail does not say what violations are being looked into.

The EB-5 visa program awards foreign nationals a visa if they invest between $500,000 and $1 million in a project or business in the United States, leading to the creation of jobs for U.S. citizens. Investors approved for the program can become legal residents after two years and may eventually be eligible for citizenship.

The complaint against Mayorkas is that he helped a Virginia-based financing company run by Anthony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, win approval for an EB-5 visa for a Chinese investor after the visa application was denied. The rejection of the original application was upheld on appeal.

It is unclear why the application was rejected, and why the rejection was upheld..

A second allegation involving Mayorkas says that other USCIS officials obstructed an audit of the visa program by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The IG e-mail said that “at this point in our investigation, we do not have any findings of criminal misconduct.”

The FBI office in Washington requested from USCIA details of all the limited liability companies which invested in the EB-5program, particularly Chinese companies.

“Let’s just say that we have a significant issue that my higher ups are really concerned about and this may be addressed way above my pay grade,” an FBI official wrote in an e-mail which accompanied the IG office’s e-mail to lawmakers. The FBI official’s name was redacted.

According to an undated, unclassified State Department report on the EB-5 program, the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China, processed more investor visas in the 2011 fiscal year than any other U.S. consulate or embassy.

“Applicants are usually coached and prepped for their interviews, making it difficult to take at face value applicants’ claims” on where the money they want to invest came from and if they hold membership in China’s Communist Party, which would make the investor automatically ineligible for the program, the State Department document says.

The Post notes that this is not the first involvement of Mayorkas, a former U.S. attorney in California, with a sibling of Hilary Clinton. He worked with Hugh Rodham, Hilary’s other brother, to persuade Bill Clinton to commute the prison sentence of the son of a Democratic Party donor. The donor hired Hugh Rodham to campaign for the commutation.

During his 2009 confirmation hearing, Mayorkas told lawmakers that “it was a mistake” to talk to the White House about the commutation.