President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of Alejandro Mayorkas to lead the Department of Homeland Security thrilled immigrant advocates on Monday and won praise from former DHS leaders who described him as a savvy department veteran who would try to stabilize the organization after years of front-office turmoil under President Trump.

“When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me a place of refuge,” Mayorkas wrote in a tweet.

When he was DHS deputy secretary under President Barack Obama in 2015, Mayorkas was one of the government officials who participated in negotiations with the Cuban government after the United States normalized relations with Havana, a policy that Trump promptly reversed.

Tom Ridge, who served as the first Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W.

Early in his career, Mayorkas served as an assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California, and he specialized in prosecuting white-collar crime, such as the federal tax evasion and money-laundering case against Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss.

John Sandweg, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who served with Mayorkas from 2009 to 2014, called Mayorkas an “ideal choice” to run the department, with his personal background, law-enforcement experience and deep knowledge of the nation’s immigration system.

It is likely that Biden’s administration will upend much of what Trump did on immigration; while the Trump administration said anyone could be deported, Biden has signaled that he would refocus ICE on people who pose a threat to public safety and national security.

He said one of the things Mayorkas was proudest of creating was the USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, to emphasize that vetting was crucial in giving out immigration benefits

Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, an organization that aids refugees, said Mayorkas sits on the board and is “uniquely suited” to lead the agency “as the child of a Holocaust survivor, as a Latino and as a refugee and immigrant himself.”

“Ali is uniquely suited to rebuild public trust in the Department of Homeland Security, as he knows that America is at its greatest when we build bridges, not walls,” Hetfield said