What to know about homeland security’s Kirstjen Nielsen,
HOMELAND SECURITY HEAD NIELSEN TAKES HEAT FOR SEPARATING KIDS FROM PARENTS
The head of the United States’ massive Homeland Security Department underwent what seems like a quintessentially Donald Trump ordeal this May.
Sitting just a few chairs away from Kirstjen Nielsen, the president delivered an angry lecture to his cabinet about the poor job Homeland Security was doing at keeping out illegal immigrants, according to multiple media reports.
Nielsen considered quitting after the dressing down, those reports indicated. She didn’t, but the past few days suggest the secretary is working valiantly to get back in Trump’s good books.
In a weekend tweet that seemed to refute demonstrable facts and a controversial news conference and speech Monday, Nielsen first denied, then aggressively defended her department’s recent practice of separating children from parents who illegally cross the U.S. southern border.
In doing so, she has made herself arguably the most visible defender of the family separations, and a lightning rod for growing, bipartisan condemnation of the policy.
The lawyer and cyber-security consultant has also added another twist to a surprising tenure near the top of the Trump administration, one that followed a central role in another government’s contentious response to Hurricane Katrina.
“We will not apologize for the job we do, or for the job law enforcement does, for doing the job that the American people expect us to do,” she said about the family separations at a news conference Monday. “Illegal actions have and must have consequences. No more free passes, no more get-out-of-jail-free cards.”
About 2,000 children have been separated from their parents at the border since the government began prosecuting criminally adults who allegedly trying to get into the States illegally, an influx it calls a crisis.
Democratic members of Congress are already baying for Nielsen’s resignation, as is a former classmate at Georgetown University’s school of foreign service, appalled at behaviour he believes is out of character.
Nielsen was a moderate Republican, a compassionate conservative in the ilk of former Sen. Bob Dole, said television producer Arick Wierson in an opinion article Tuesday for CNN.
“She was smart, sure of herself, and unafraid to stake out strong positions. But she was also measured and seemed to grasp the nuances that complex questions often engender,” wrote Wierson. “Many of us who know Nielsen from Georgetown cannot believe that she is the same person who we see as, if not the architect, then certainly the engineer of this tragically dark chapter of our nation’s history.”
But there is little predictable about the path that brought her to the head of a department with more than 240,000 employees and agencies ranging from customs and border protection to the coast guard and secret service.
Nielsen is the daughter of two military doctors, according to a University of Virginia law review article, who attended George Washington’s foreignservice school and studied in Nagoya, Japan, aiming for a career in diplomacy.
Then she went to law school and practised for a while in Dallas, before joining the George W. Bush White House in 2002.
One of her jobs was as a senior director in the Homeland Security Council, a predecessor of the department she now runs. She and a small staff acted as a conduit for information on Katrina, earning her a mention in congressional reports that blasted Bush’s response to the disaster in New Orleans.
Back in private life after 2007, Nielsen led a national-security policy group at a new consulting company, and eventually launched her own cyber-security consultancy, Sunesis (not to be confused with a similarly named Calgary firm).
She joined the Trump administration in January 2017, becoming chief of staff to Homeland Security secretary John Kelly, reportedly after Kelly’s first choice for the job — a former air force colonel — was rejected by the White House as being too closely tied to the Obama administration.
After Kelly was tapped to be Trump’s chief of staff, the president picked Nielsen to take over at Homeland Security, despite her lack of experience running large organizations.
A New Yorker profile in March quotes unnamed department officials as saying she was widely viewed as unqualified.
“She definitely doesn’t have the gravitas to be secretary,” one told the magazine. “It’s terrible for morale.”
But she won support from others, including two former Homeland Security secretaries, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff.
The new job placed her at the fulcrum of one of Trump’s signature campaign promises, a crackdown on illegal immigration and rethinking of legal immigration.
Nielsen soon drew heat for her role, as a department press release criticized a bipartisan immigration bill, and she told senators she couldn’t recall if Trump had referred to African countries as “s--tholes” during a meeting.
Media reports suggest that Trump’s complaints to cabinet in May were prompted by a resurgence in illegal border crossings in 2018, after a slowdown during his first year in power that he often boasted about.
The New York Times quoted several officials last month as saying the president wanted families separated at the border as a deterrent to unauthorized crossings, but was annoyed that Nielsen was resisting the idea.
As the issue becomes a political firestorm, and Nielsen the administration’s chief advocate on the file, it seems unlikely Trump would still have such misgivings.