DHS chief Nielsen resigns
Homeland Security official departs amid tensions with the Trump administration
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned on Sunday amid the administration’s growing frustration and bitterness over the number of Central American families crossing the southern border, two people familiar with the decision said.
President Donald Trump thanked her for her work in a tweet and announced that U.S. Customs and
Border Protection Commissioner Kevin Mcaleenan would be taking over as acting head of the department.
And while New York state may seem far removed from the turmoil on the Mexican border, local activists said Sunday evening that Nielsen’s policies have had a strong local impact.
“Nielsen was in charge of policies like family separation and the crisis at the border that the administration created last summer that led to what happened at the Albany County jail,” said Camille Mackler, director of immigration legal policy at the New York Immigration Coalition, referring to the more than 300 migrants from the southern border who were housed temporarily in the local jail.
“They hold really broad powers over immigration that could trickle down to local immigrant communities and how they’re adjudicating immigration applications and enforcing laws,” Mackler added.
Sarah Rogerson, an Albany Law School
professor who represents locally detained immigrants, said the change is likely to usher in even harsher anti-immigrant policies.
“Many of our clients have already been negatively impacted by Trump’s policies,” Rogerson said. “We continue to fight for their rights under law.”
Mcaleenan is a longtime border official who is well-respected by members of Congress and within the administration. The decision to name an immigration officer to the post reflects Trump’s priority for the sprawling Homeland Security agency, founded to combat terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mackler said the choice of Mcaleenan as the temporary head of the agency shows that the government is prioritizing immigration — and especially the borders.
New Yorkers may have already felt the effects of the policies of Customs and Border Protection, the agency Mcaleenan currently oversees, which is active in parts of upstate New York.
The New York Civil Liberties Union released an analysis last week of hundreds of pages of records obtained from more than 200 Border Patrol stops between November 2016 and March 2017; it showed that local police in upstate New York call Border Patrol on suspicion that Latinos lack valid immigration status and hold people for the agency to arrest.
New York’s elected officials also responded to the news of Nielsen’s resignation Sunday night.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is running for president, tweeted that she had voted against Nielsen’s nomination and had called for her resignation “over the administration’s inhumane treatment of immigrant families six months ago.”
Sen. Charles Schumer, the Senate minority leader, tweeted: “When even the most radical voices in the administration aren’t radical enough for President Trump, you know he’s completely lost touch with the American people.”
Though Trump aides were eyeing a staff shakeup at Homeland Security and had already withdrawn the nomination for another key immigration post, the development Sunday was unexpected.
Nielsen traveled to the U.s.-mexico border on Friday with Trump to participate in a roundtable with border officers and local law enforcement. There, she echoed Trump’s comments on the situation at the border, though she ducked out of the room without explanation for some time while Trump spoke. As they toured a section of newly rebuilt barriers, Nielsen was at Trump’s side, introducing him to local officials. She returned to Washington afterward on a Coast Guard Gulfstream, as Trump continued on a fundraising trip to California and Nevada.
But privately, she had grown increasingly frustrated by what she saw as a lack of support from other departments and increased meddling by Trump aides, the people said. She went into a meeting with Trump at the White House on Sunday not knowing whether she’d be fired or would resign, and she ended up resigning, they said.
Her resignation letter, obtained by The Associated Press, had not a whiff of controversy, unlike those from others who have left from the administration.
“Despite our progress in reforming homeland security for a new age, I have determined that it is the right time for me to step aside,” she wrote. “I hope that the next secretary will have the support of Congress and the courts in fixing the laws which have impeded our ability to fully secure America’s borders and which have contributed to discord in our nation’s discourse.”
There have been persistent tensions between the White House and Nielsen almost from the moment she became secretary, after her predecessor, John Kelly, became the White House chief of staff in 2017. Nielsen was viewed as resistant to some of the harshest immigration measures supported by the president and his aides, particularly senior adviser Stephen Miller, both on matters around the border and other issues like protected status for some refugees. Once Kelly left the White House last year, Nielsen’s days appeared to be numbered. She had expected to be pushed out last November, but her exit never materialized. And during the government shutdown over Trump’s insistence for funding for a border wall, Nielsen’s stock inside the White House even appeared to rise.
But in recent weeks, as a new wave of migration has taxed resources along the border and as Trump sought to regain control of the issue for his 2020 re-election campaign, tensions flared anew.
Arrests all along the southern border have skyrocketed in recent months. Border agents are on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry at the southern border this month, over half of which are families with children.
Nielsen advocated for strong cybersecurity defense and often said she believed the next major terror attack would occur online — not by planes or bombs. She was tasked with helping states secure elections following Russian interference during the 2016 election.
She dutifully pushed Trump’s immigration policies, including funding for his border wall, and defended the administration’s practice of separating children from parents, telling a Senate committee that removing children from parents facing criminal charges happens “in the United States every day.” But she was also instrumental in ending the policy.
Under Nielsen, migrants seeking asylum are waiting in Mexico as their cases progress. She also moved to abandon longstanding regulations that dictate how long children are allowed to be held in immigration detention, and requested bed space from the U.S. military for some 12,000 people in an effort to detain all families who cross the border. Right now there is space for about 3,000 families and facilities are at capacity.