Homeland Security purges advisers
Mayorkas fires most of advisory council
WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas fired most members of the department’s independent advisory council on Friday, a purge that included several allies of former President Donald Trump and veteran officials who served under both parties.
Former Department of Homeland Security officials and advisory board members who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they could not remember so many members being dismissed at once, as the general practice of past administrations was to allow appointees to serve out their terms before replacing them.
The council is unpaid and includes leaders from state and local government, law enforcement, the private sector and academia who advise the agency on issues such as immigration, terrorism, crime and national disasters. Members serve oneto three-year terms and meet about four times a year.
The removal of more than 30 board members comes as the Biden administration tries to rid the department of Trump-era policies and practices, especially on immigration, and as it has struggled to shelter and care for an unprecedented number of migrant children and teenagers who have arrived at the southwest border without their parents.
DHS officials said Mr. Mayorkas would conduct an assessment of the council and reconstitute it with bipartisan members who better reflect the diversity of the United States and the people DHS serves. Mr. Mayorkas said he plans to retain Chairman William Bratton, the former police commissioner in New York and police chief in Los Angeles, and Vice Chair Karen Tandy, a retired administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. William Webster, former director of the FBI and the CIA, will remain the council’s chair emeritus.
But everyone else is out. “In the service of an orderly transition to a new model for the [Homeland Security Advisory Council], I have ended the term of current HSAC members,” Mr. Mayorkas wrote in a letter Friday obtained by The Washington Post. “I will reconstitute the HSAC in the next few weeks, once the new model has been developed.”
The Trump administration typically allowed the terms of board members to lapse before replacing them. In 2018, four members of the council — all Obama administration appointees — resigned in protest of the Trump administration separating migrant parents from their children at the border, calling the policy “morally repugnant.”
Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., ranking Republican of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Mr. Mayorkas’ “action sends the message that this administration has no intention of upholding a bipartisan, unifying approach to securing our homeland.”