Two candidates with starkly different backgrounds sit at the top of President Trump’s list of possible replacements for outgoing acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, according to three current and former senior DHS officials familiar with the discussions.
Ken Cuccinelli, a staunch conservative and border hawk with an affinity for Twitter and television, is the expected choice, but career DHS employee and veteran, David Pekoske, is also a possibility — and highly qualified.
Cuccinelli is the acting director of the department’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency and was inserted into the department, in a temporary capacity, four months ago.
“All signs point to Cuccinelli,” said one DHS official, who suggested that the White House may be monitoring reactions to one news report from Sunday floating Cuccinelli as the anticipated leader of the 240,000-person department, to see how much it upset Democrats and advocates of liberalized immigration rules.
Cuccinelli was a Virginia state senator in the 2000s and later became state attorney general. He advised the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016 and was general counsel for Tea Party-aligned FreedomWorks after.
While in these positions, he adamantly advocated for policies and laws that restrict immigration. As a state legislator, he introduced legislation to force Virginia employees to speak only English at work, to call for a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants, and to bar illegal immigrants from receiving in-state tuition for public colleges.
He also compared immigrants to “rats” in 2013, said states should use “war powers” to block immigrants from crossing the border to claim asylum, and claimed the southern border was being “invaded” in 2015.
The same official said the White House might be inclined to go with Cuccinelli even though he’s viewed as unable to get confirmed — including by Republican senators, in Politico, The Hill, and Roll Call articles — because they do not expect Democratic lawmakers to confirm any of Trump’s nominees given their focus on impeachment proceedings, so might as well go with him.
The second option, Pekoske, is the acting deputy secretary of DHS under McAleenan. Pekoske was the other official in consideration when Trump chose McAleenan to replace former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Pekoske, 64, in 2010 concluded 33 years in the military, finishing as vice commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. The guard is the only one of the five military branches that is under DHS instead of the Defense Department because its personnel work closely with U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the sea border.
In June 2017, Trump nominated Pekoske to head TSA, and he was confirmed. His peers praised him last November and said the agency’s screening protocols have flourished in recent years compared to the 2016 meltdown.
The decision may come down to how the Trump administration thinks each will push forward its agenda.
Cuccinelli, 51, is known for going after those who disagree with him on Twitter and frequenting Fox News shows — pages out of Trump’s playbook. He has introduced several regulations despite not being confirmed, which is normally the prerequisite for taking such legal actions. Some of those proposals and rules, including the Public Charge update that bars more green card applicants who have relied on public assistance, changes to the asylum process, and work permits for asylum seekers residing in the country, have been challenged in court this summer.
Theresa Cardinal Brown, the immigration and cross-border director for the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the Trump administration is intentionally circumventing Congress to get its agenda implemented and said appointing or nominating someone to oversee that department who himself is not eligible “could be further grounds for the courts to enjoin” regulations, policy memos, and executive actions — all of which would mean delays to the administration.
“For example, the recent public charge regulations have been challenged at least in part on the basis that Cuccinelli is not legally in the job of USCIS director,” Cardinal Brown wrote in an email Monday. “So the advocacy community is not unaware of this avenue of attack.”
“But Cuccinelli is clearly the one the president wants to see on TV and be outspoken. That works to keep him in the president’s good graces, but it doesn’t necessarily help him actually manage the department,” she added.
While Pekoske has little experience with immigration policy, he understands other aspects of DHS business that Cardinal Brown said have been neglected for the past few years.
“There are so many operational agencies, including Coast Guard and CISA, Secret Service and Federal Protective Service. They all have important missions that need attending to, and with so many vacancies in the Department, there’s a lot that is getting little attention. But some significant ones include cybersecurity and election security, and now we have issues with major events and increases in domestic mass attacks (which Secret Service manages),” Brown wrote.
“In terms of longevity in the Department and knowing these missions, Pekoske obviously has more experience,” she finished.
Trump is expected to name his selection later this week and has not specified when McAleenan is leaving the department.
