The U.S. Department of Homeland Security hosted an awards ceremony July 27 at DHS Headquarters, where 56 employees received a Secretary’s Award in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the mission.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas officiated the ceremony and celebrated the workforce's achievements, highlighting the dedication and efforts of employees in various areas such as cybersecurity, disaster response, immigration and protecting the nation's critical infrastructure, according to a news release.
“Every day, the men and women of the Department respond to cyberattacks; save lives by sea and air; secure our nation’s borders and critical infrastructure; and deploy across the country to help Americans recover from disasters; and so much more," Mayorkas said in the release.
The recipients of this year's awards increased the speed with which noncitizens are processed at the southwest border, responded to natural disasters across the nation, looked into cybercrime, developed a more efficient system for deciding asylum applications, resettled nearly 90,000 Afghan refugees in the country safely and securely, gave organizations resources to strengthen their cybersecurity resilience and established a procedure for Ukrainian nationals fleeing conflict. According to the release, more than 1,300 employees will be honored at eight events held by DHS this year.
"Their achievements aren’t only on the front lines, but also extend behind the scenes to modernize and streamline the Department’s processes in order to better relationships between the Department and the people we serve," Mayorkas added, according to the release. "It is the honor of my life to lead this Department and to recognize some of the extraordinary public servants who safeguard our nation and keep us all safe."
"I am incredibly humbled to receive the Secretary's Meritorious Service Silver Medal Award for all of the work that I do every day really trying to represent and bring to the forefront the phenomenal men and women of the Federal Protective Service and their incredible actions they take every day to protect the federal facilities that we're responsible for and the millions of people that enter them over the course of a year," Federal Protective Service Chief of Staff Jennifer Beasley said in the release.
Scott Shockey received the Gold Medal for Exceptional Service for his work with the interagency Afghanistan Crisis Action Group, the release reported. The group helped to streamline and maintain a vetting procedure that met the changing requirements of DHS, USCIS, the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Counterterrorism Center and the U.S. intelligence community.
One of the largest evacuation vetting operations in American history was made effective because of Shockey's supervision of the Office of Biometric Identity Management, which allowed for the successful analysis of 55,000 Afghan evacuees in a single month, the release said.
