President Trump’s moves at the Department of Homeland Security this week amount to an all-out declaration of war on illegal immigration, one that will rewrite rules of engagement and require his top aides run the battle from the border, according to officials.
A senior aide said that the president wants a “battlefield commander” who will take the fight to the border and not get stalled or sidelined by agency and congressional politics.
“We have to have somebody in the battlefield on a day-to-day basis, in like a forward theater, that’s actually making decisions in real time to meet deadlines and meet targets,” said the official. It is “very difficult to direct that … from a distance,” said the official.
While the media has been focused on the West Wing’s “purge” at Homeland Security and the possibility that the president will restore a program to separate illegal immigrant children from parents suspected of crimes, the administration has already shifted to reducing the numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border and entering on asylum claims.
One official said the goal is a simple. “We need to stop illegal immigration, bring those numbers down.”
Everybody is now acknowledging that, right from the time I announced my run for President, I was 100% correct on the Border. Remember the heat I took? Democrats should now get rid of the loopholes. The Border is being fixed. Mexico will not let people through!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2019
Trump, said insiders, has been frustrated with Homeland Security officials who he feels didn’t get the message of his 2016 presidential campaign that opened with a promise to fight illegal immigration.
Trump also believes that the Washington bureaucracy is too pro-immigrant and ignores the public’s demands for tightened border controls and essentially him, said the insiders.
“There is a cultural bias … of granting benefits” to illegal immigrants, said the senior official, adding, the goal is “changing that culture to one of protecting U.S. workers and citizens rather than seeing applicant as the ‘client.’”
Champions of immigration reform have cheered some of the president’s moves.
“Yes, the president is declaring war on the border crisis, and that’s what is needed at this point. He cannot sit back and watch as thousands of people cross illegally into our country week after week, leaving local communities to be forced to accommodate them, and taxpayers to foot the bill, while the cartels and the smugglers get richer and stronger,” said Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.
The changes at Homeland Security are an extension of the president’s executive action to shift Pentagon money to the border for construction of a wall after being frustrated by Congress.
“There are things that we can do administratively,” said another official.
That will be left to acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who replaces ousted Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The officials said that McAleean understands the president’s demands and has been given the Oval Office’s full blessing to form his own immigration team.
The initial push will be to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border and drastically reduce the number of asylum seekers let into the nation. The officials said that most should be turned away because when the full asylum process is played out, only about 10% are ever granted the status. In the meantime, many are given temporary entry into the nation, but most never report back to government officials.
In fact, said the senior official, when asylum seekers successfully make it in they use social media to brag about it, creating a “giant magnet factor” for more to seek entry into the U.S.
The surge in claims of “credible fear” back home have been documented for years and now the administration wants to set a higher bar for it to be granted, including a better understanding of the situation in the home countries of immigrants.
“The purpose of credible fear is not ease the path of meritless asylum seekers, but to actually weed out meritless asylum seekers,” said the senior official who said the administration wants a “front line screening method.”
Trump choice for Homeland agency faces pressure on border security, skepticism from immigration hawks. https://t.co/GFP02Su5ZX via @SFGate
— Jessica Vaughan (@JessicaV_CIS) April 9, 2019
While changes are being fast tracked at Homeland Security, pro-reform advocates like Vaughan remain skeptical of those the administration has picked to run the new effort and those remaining who are under fire.
Trump, she said, “has shaken up the command personnel, but I worry that too many of the same people at DHS are in place, some appointed by Nielsen, who did nothing but half measures and finger pointing at others, for instance, setting up (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee) Francis Cissna as a scapegoat, while they sat on their hands or actively obstructed needed policies. There is more housecleaning for the White House to take care of. In addition, they need to articulate the policies and lean on both the political appointees and the career bureaucrats to get them done.”
