New DHS chief known for hard line
President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security didn’t take the traditional route to his position, but Kevin McAleenan has carried out every aspect of the president’s hard-line immigration strategy in an attempt to seal the southern border.
After the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen, the former business and corporate lawyer steps into a perilous position where he’ll have to please an increasingly exasperated president as illegal migration along the border explodes.
A surge of migrants has overwhelmed the U.S. immigration system in recent months. In response, Trump threatened to close the border and cut off aid to the Central American countries that migrants flee. Trump visited the border in Calexico, California, on Friday with Nielsen.
Nielsen voiced increasing frustration at the situation, which the administration considers a national security crisis. Last week, she compared it to a Category 5 hurricane.
All along, McAleenan has been at the center of that storm.
A tough border law enforcer
After graduating from Amherst College and the University of Chicago Law School, he worked in California as an attorney practicing business and corporate law. After 9/11 he decided to change course, first applying to the FBI and eventually landing a job at what is now Customs and Border Protection.
McAleenan headed that agency’s anti-terrorism office and was port director of Los Angeles International Airport. He rose through the ranks before Trump nominated him as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection with its 45,000 law enforcement personnel.
Ever since, McAleenan has carried out some of Trump’s most controversial efforts to halt undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers from crossing the southern border.
The officers and agents he commands separated more than 2,800 migrant children from their families during Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. His officers fired tear gas into a crowd of migrants trying to approach the San Ysidro Port of Entry in November. Starting in December, four migrants died in four months while in Border Patrol custody.
McAleenan made several tweaks to his agency’s process, ordering faster public notification of migrants’ deaths in custody and carrying out orders from Nielsen to medically screen all children in custody.
During a visit to the San Ysidro Port of Entry last year, McAleenan was asked why the administration was adding National Guardsmen, active-duty military troops and Border Patrol agents to the southern border but not making a similar effort to add asylum officers to process and care for migrants seeking help. His answer: “This is a law enforcement situation.”
At odds on Central American aid
He defended another controversial practice employed by the agency of “metering” would-be asylum seekers, meaning only a limited number are allowed to enter U.S. ports of entry each day. Critics say it’s unfair of the administration to ask migrants to make their asylum claims at ports, then make them wait weeks or months on the Mexican side of the border.
“It’s not turning people away, it’s asking them to wait,” McAleenan said.
The one area where he has been at odds with Trump is on aid to Central America. Trump said he would cut $450 million in aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala after deciding that those countries don’t do enough to keep their citizens from migrating north to the U.S. In an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March, McAleenan argued that those countries need that help to improve living conditions enough so their people don’t flee.
“We need to continue to support the governments in Central America to improve economic opportunities, to address poverty and hunger and to improve governance and security,” he testified.