Margarita Devlin

Status: VACANT POST — the Under Secretary for Benefits position has been unfilled since January 20, 2025. Margarita Devlin, Principal Deputy, performs the delegable duties.

There is no Under Secretary for Benefits. There hasn't been one for twenty-one months. The work — disability compensation, pension, the GI Bill, home loans, roughly $200 billion a year to nearly seven million beneficiaries — is done by a career deputy "performing the duties."

Margarita Devlin is a career senior executive and certified rehabilitation counselor who held this same principal-deputy job in 2018–2021, served at the Labor Department’s veterans’ employment service, and returned to VBA in 2025.

The failed hire: nominee Karen Brazell, a Collins senior advisor, was nominated in June 2025, had a difficult hearing that September, and withdrew in October 2025 “for personal reasons.” VA relaunched the search in January 2026 under a commission chaired by the Deputy Secretary. As of the latest reporting, no new candidate has been announced.

Accountable for: VBA — including the claims operation whose speed this site credits on His Victories, and the rating record of Thomas Bowman, Sr.: $201 a month in 2003, the real money only in October 2022.

On video: congressional testimony (House Veterans’ Affairs, April 2026); VBA also runs its own official YouTube channel.

Official bio: department.va.gov. Verified October 16, 2026.