Immigration hawks didn’t get their first choice for secretary of homeland security when President-elect Trump nominated retired Gen. John Kelly on Wednesday, but they didn’t get their least preferred option either.
Champions of tighter immigration controls had wanted Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach but were lukewarm to hostile to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McFaul, R-Texas. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke was a third name that popped up in connection with the position.
The Department of Homeland Security is the most important Cabinet-level agency when it comes to immigration and customs enforcement. Restrictionists already saw another key ally, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., nominated for attorney general.
Reactions from immigration hardliners were mixed. The Federation of American Immigration Reform praised Kelly as a “strong choice for DHS” in a statement. “General Kelly has spent his life defending our nation and understands the critical role border security plays in protecting the country from the threats of terrorism, out of control illegal immigration, and drugs,” said FAIR’s president Dan Stein.
But others expressed concern that Kelly was too much of a question mark on immigration policy. “Gen. Kelly obviously committed to the physical security of Americans,” noted Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Immigration law is also for protecting their economic security.”
Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, which like the Center and FAIR advocates lower immigration levels, had a similar reaction. “Gen. Kelly’s background provides assurances that he would be fully committed and experienced to protect the physical security of the American people,” she said in a statement. “We will be looking for immediate signs that he will show the same commitment to enforcing immigration laws to protect economic security of American workers and their families.”
Yet there remain many reasons for optimism among immigration hawks. First, Kobach is still in the running for the deputy secretary position, which would still allow him to have a substantial impact on immigration and could conceivably improve his confirmation chances compared to the top spot. (Both Kelly and McCaul were more easily confirmable.)
FAIR’s statement advocated Kobach’s appointment to a “key position with the administration in immigration enforcement.” Kobach’s ties to restrictionist groups were sure to be brought up by Democrats in any confirmation hearings. It’s possible that Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake might have had unfavorable memories of his role in drafting the state’s tough SB 1070 law, which triggered boycotts and a partially successful legal challenge decided by the Supreme Court.
More importantly, the president-elect’s own words suggest immigration hawks inside the administration still have his ear. “We will ask Congress to reform our visa and immigration programs to protect jobs and wages for American workers,” Trump said during the second stop of his post-election “thank you” tour Tuesday night.
Trump promised to end illegal immigration, build the border wall and break up criminal cartels. But most noteworthy were his comments about legal immigration. “They are going to come in legally, but by the hundreds of thousands,” Trump said, implying a reduction from the more than 1 million new immigrants that have been admitted annually in recent years.
Yes, Trump has been all over the place in what he has said about some immigration-related topics, especially legal immigration. But there is a specificity to this pledge that suggests restrictionist influence: advocates of lower immigration levels would usually cap new admissions at several hundred thousand per year.
Immigration hawks nevertheless fear that these words will be meaningless if Trump doesn’t have the right personnel or get the necessary support from Republicans in Congress.
Kelly has defended the right of sovereign nations to protect their borders, adding that he does not believe the U.S. border with Mexico is secure. “We have a right to do that,” he told the Military Times. “Every country has the right to do that. Obviously, some form of control, whether it’s a wall or a fence.”
He has also described lax border security, the collapse of neighboring countries into drug-related violence and uncontrolled migrant flows as an “existential” threat. “Many argue these threats are not existential and do not challenge our national security,” Kelly told Defense One. “I disagree.”
But Kelly also argues that illegal immigration is primarily driven by a lack of economic opportunity and an excess of violence in the migrants’ home countries. Therefore, it is most important to address these root causes. “No wall will work by itself,” he told Foreign Policy.
The wall is one of the main campaign promises from the man who will soon be Kelly’s boss, if all goes well in the Senate. And that man, incoming President Trump, still appears to be an immigration hawk himself.
