Trump’s purge of leadership at Homeland Security widens
Secret Service director is next to go; insiders say he’s likely not the last
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump continued to dismantle the nation’s top domestic security agency Monday as the White House announced the imminent removal of U.S. Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, the latest in a series of departures from the Department of Homeland Security.
A day after Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to step aside following a White House meeting with President Donald Trump, senior Homeland Security officials remained in a fog about the fate of their agency’s leaders, expecting more firings as part of a widening purge.
“They are decapitating the entire department,” said one Homeland Security official, noting that the White House had given no cause for Alles’ removal.
The instability extends to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose director, William “Brock” Long, left the DHS in February after supervising emergency and recovery efforts for several major natural disasters. Francis Cissna, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Homeland Security General Counsel John Mitnick could be the next to go, department officials said Monday, speaking on the condition
of anonymity to talk candidly of their frustrations with the White House.
Successive presidents have viewed stability at Homeland Security — created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — as a top priority for national security, counterterrorism efforts and, more broadly, the country’s collective peace of mind.
With nearly two dozen agencies and subagencies, the Homeland Security is responsible for safeguarding the country’s immigration system, cyber networks, land borders and coasts while responding to disasters and protecting the country’s public officials.
Trump is furious about the department’s inability to reduce unauthorized migration to the United States, with one of his signature campaign issues devolving in public. But several administration officials said Monday that Trump appears to be taking out his frustrations on the entire Homeland Security leadership, convinced he needs a full sweep.
Further exacerbating Trump’s struggles with immigration policy Monday was a California federal judge’s ruling to block the experimental “Remain in Mexico” program that has sent hundreds of Central American asylum-seekers back across the border to wait outside U.S. territory while their asylum claims are processed.
Homeland Security officials viewed the policy as one of Nielsen’s most significant initiatives — they were hoping to expand its use broadly across the southern border — and its halt leaves the department without one of the tools it was counting on to deter more Central American migrants from making the journey.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the border crisis created by the largest migration surge in a decade was being compounded by the removal of so many Homeland Security leaders in rapid succession.
“In addition to congressional dysfunction, I am concerned with growing leadership void within the department tasked with addressing some of the most significant problems facing the nation,” Johnson tweeted Monday.
No president before Trump has pushed the country’s security agencies into such a state of churning confusion, current and former Homeland Security officials said Monday.
Last week, Trump abruptly rescinded his nomination of Ronald Vitiello to be director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying he wanted to go in a “tougher” direction. Alles and Vitiello report to Nielsen.
Nielsen is scheduled to end her tenure Wednesday, when Kevin McAleenan, the current commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, takes over as acting Homeland Security chief. His move leaves a vacancy at the top of Customs and Border Protection, the country’s largest law enforcement agency.
Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller has been among the leading voices urging the president to clean house at Homeland Security, encouraging Trump to take wider aim at the entire department, not just the agencies responsible for immigration policy and border enforcement, White House aides said Monday.
“Immigration was the president’s signature issue, and for a variety of reasons things are spinning out of control,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group with proposals to reduce immigration that have been influential in the Trump White House.
Krikorian said the 2020 election “isn’t that far away, and he needs to be able to show some progress” in managing the border crisis. By threatening to cut off aid to Central America and close the border with Mexico, Trump is “throwing anything against the wall to see what sticks.”
Trump named Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly to the Homeland Security secretary role after his 2016 win, in part to reassure the country that a former reality television star would surround himself with military leaders and security experts. Two years later, the president increasingly believes the whole leadership structure that Kelly installed is ineffective, current and former administration officials said.
One former Homeland Security official said that when former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson left the State Department, many of the political appointees departed. But when Kelly left Homeland Security, most of the political appointees stayed. “They needed a big shake-up,” the former official said.
After Trump found out last week that more than 103,000 migrants arrived at the Mexico border in March — the highest total in more than a decade — he was livid, according to a White House official. The president was additionally frustrated that Nielsen and others would not close the border and change the rules to immediately stop migrants from coming to the United States to request asylum.