Trump taps hardliners but softens immigration talk
NEW YORK—Donald Trump embraced new Cabinet officers Wednesday whose backgrounds suggest he’s primed to put tough actions behind his campaign rhetoric on immigration and the environment, even as he seemed to soften his yearlong stance on immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
It’s clearer by the day, underscored by Trump’s at-times contradictory words, that his actual policies as president won’t be settled until after he takes his seat in the Oval Office.
Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly has been selected to head the Department of Homeland Security, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate-change denier whose policies have helped fossil fuel companies, is to be announced as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Separately, Trump named the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon, to head the Small Business Administration.
Trump’s long presidential campaign was in large part defined by searing rhetoric and his steadfast promises to build an impenetrable wall on the border with Mexico and crack down on immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. But he struck a softer tone in an interview published Wednesday after he was named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Trump said. “They got brought here at a very young age; they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”
He offered no details about a policy that would make that clear.
During the campaign, Trump’s tough comments—including a vow to overturn President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration— have led to fears among immigrant advocates that he will end Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Hundreds of thousands of young immigrants have gained work permits and temporary protection from deportation under the 2012 program, which aides to Trump have said would be revisited.
Others continue to press the immigrants’ case. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel presented Trump a letter Wednesday from 14 big city mayors urging him to keep the program intact.
“They were working hard toward the American dream,” Emmanuel told reporters in lobby of Trump’s skyscraper. “It’s no fault of their own their parents came here. They are something we should hold up and embrace.”
Though some immigrant advocates hope Trump’s words were an olive branch, others were skeptical.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Frank Sharry of the immigrant-rights group America’s Voice said in a statement. “Unfortunately we expect no pivot and no softening.”
Meanwhile, Trump moved toward making another addition to the collection of generals in his Cabinet, settling on Kelly to head Homeland Security, according to people close to transition. Gen. Kelly, who joined the Marine Corps in 1970, retired this year after a final command that included oversight of the Guantanamo Bay detention center.