Nielsen Out, Another Acting In

President Trump: “Our country is full. Turn around.”

Kirstjen Nielsen joins her former boss, John Kelly, as pushed out (fired) by Donald Trump for not being tough enough. With asylum seekers increasing and illegal border crossings continuing, Nielsen’s job became impossible. Trump is also looking for a new “tougher” ICE administrator. President Trump, who used anti-immigration policies and rhetoric in both the 2016 and 2018 elections, is seriously concerned the border issue could be a failed promise and not a rallying point for his base.

Conditions in Central America, such as drought, poverty and criminality, and America’s booming tight employment economy and well-organized migrant smugglers, have produced record surges to the border in spite of Trump’s use of the army and various immigrant deterrence tactics.

Kelly was replaced by the Freedom Caucus’s founder, Mick Mulvaney. Stephen Miller was rumored to be behind the changes. No doubt, the next heads of Homeland Security and ICE will be seen as least as “tough” on immigration enforcement as those two.

President Donald Trump, next to Kirstjen Nielsen, speaks with members of the U.S.
Customs and Border Patrol, Calexico, CA, April 5, 2019 | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images