President Donald Trump’s purging of top leaders at the Department of Homeland Security illustrates just how extreme the president’s immigration policy has become.
Trump forced out Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Sunday. That followed his rescinding last week of his nomination of Ronald Vitiello to be director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying he wanted to go in a “tougher” direction. Then, on Monday, U.S. Secret Service Director Randolph Alles was ousted.
There’s more to come, the New York Times reports. L. Francis Cissna, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and John Mitnick, the department’s general counsel and a senior member of Nielsen’s leadership team, will soon leave, too.
The timing couldn’t be worse. If ever there was a time our country needed to compromise on immigration issues, this is it. But Trump’s uninterested in compromise. He’s focused on separating families, building a wall and sealing the border with Mexico. The president’s promise of a border wall may have helped put him in the White House in 2016. But he has turned it into an irrational obsession.
And a costly one. The mindless effort to use the wall as a political bargaining chip in January led to the government shutdown, which cost the U.S. economy $11 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
When Nielsen isn’t tough enough for Trump, that’s troubling. The Homeland Security secretary was widely known as the most aggressive person to hold the position. It was Nielsen who presided over the separation of thousands of families in 2018. But it was her refusal to reinstate the policy in recent weeks that led to her departure.
Nielsen, according to reports, asked for a meeting Sunday with Trump seeking “a way forward” on the border issue. But the president, who has been delivering the message to migrants to “go back where you came from” because “we’re full,” refused to budge. Trump is now moving to fill the Homeland Security position with someone on board with his extreme anti-immigration views.
Meanwhile, days, weeks and years keep passing without comprehensive immigration reform. It’s a tragic loss to the nation.
As Bay Area Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, points out, we’re a nation of immigrants, from industrialist Andrew Carnegie to Google’s Sergey Brin, who have brought innovations to our shores that have helped the country prosper.
The president should embrace the notion that we can both secure our borders — without a 2,000-mile wall — and still attract the best and brightest minds from around the world to further spur our economy. He needs to surround himself with people who understand that immigrants play a crucial role in supplying the workforce our country needs.
Trump’s latest purge signals a deplorable shift away from America’s most treasured values.
— The Mercury News
