Secret service boss set to leave

THE head of the US Secret Service is leaving the agency, amid a Trump administration shake-up of Homeland Security’s leadership.

The Secret Service said Randolph “Tex” Alles would depart next month, a day after the ousting of former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, with whom President Donald Trump had clashed over immigration.

“No doubt you have seen media reports regarding my ‘firing’,” Mr Alles said to Secret Service agents.

“I assure you that this is not the case, and in fact was told weeks ago by the administration that transitions in leadership should be expected across the Department of Homeland Security.”

He had run the Secret Service for two years and served in the US Marine Corps for 35 years before retiring as a major general in 2011.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said James Murray, a career Secret Service agent, would take over the agency.

Neither Mr Trump nor the White House has explained the overhaul of Homeland Security, but the President has expressed anger at a recent surge in Central American migrants.

He made stopping illegal immigration a centrepiece in his run for office in 2016, promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and has said he will make border security a key part of his 2020 re-election campaign.

Senior senators from both parties said that they were concerned about a vacuum in leadership at the agency, which also oversees the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration.

Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement that he was “concerned with a growing leadership void within the department tasked with addressing some of the most significant problems facing the nation”.

Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said at least 10 top positions in the department were being filled with acting officials.

Mr Trump (pictured) in recent weeks empowered aide Stephen Miller to lead the administration’s border policies, according to CNN.