Homeland Security Secretary Was Close to Resigning After Trump Berated Her – By Michael D. Shear & Nicole Perlroth (nytimes.com) / May 10 2018
WASHINGTON — Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, told colleagues she was close to resigning after President Trump berated her on Wednesday in front of the entire cabinet for what he said was her failure to adequately secure the nation’s borders, according to several current and former officials familiar with the episode.
Ms. Nielsen, who is a protégée of John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has drafted a resignation letter but has not submitted it, according to two of the people. As the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Ms. Nielsen is in charge of the 20,000 employees who work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Trump’s anger toward Ms. Nielsen at the meeting was part of a lengthy tirade in which the president railed at his entire cabinet about what he said was its lack of progress toward sealing the country’s borders against illegal immigrants, according to one person who was present at the meeting.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Thursday that “the president is committed to fixing our broken immigration system and our porous borders.”
“We are a country of laws, and the president and his administration will enforce them,” she said.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on Thursday evening.
Mr. Trump’s anger about immigration has grown in recent weeks, according to several officials. He repeatedly claimed credit for the fact that during his first year in office, illegal border crossings dropped to their lowest levels in decades. But this year, they have risen again, robbing him of one of his favorite talking points.
One person familiar with Mr. Trump’s blowup at the meeting said it was triggered by a discussion about why Mexico was not doing more to prevent illegal border crossings into the United States. Another person said the president was primarily focused on the Homeland Security Department because he views Ms. Nielsen as primarily responsible for keeping illegal immigrants out of the country.
During the meeting, Mr. Trump yelled about the fact that the United States has a porous border and said that more needs to be done to fix that. When members of his cabinet pointed out that the country relies on day laborers who cross the border each day, Mr. Trump said that was fine, but continued to complain, one person said.
Ms. Nielsen viewed the president’s rant as directed mostly at her, and she told associates after the meeting that she should not continue in the job if he did not view her as effective. One person close to Ms. Nielsen said she is miserable in her job.
Mr. Trump has clashed with Ms. Nielsen for weeks about his belief that more should be done to secure the border. In early April, the president repeatedly expressed frustration with Ms. Nielsen that homeland security was not doing enough to close loopholes that were allowing illegal immigrants to flood into the country, according to one official familiar with those discussions.
During those discussions, officials had presented Mr. Trump with a list of proposals that would help border agents crack down on those trying to cross the border illegally and send them back more quickly. The president urged Ms. Nielsen to be more aggressive, the official said.
One persistent issue has been Mr. Trump’s belief that Ms. Nielsen and other officials in the department were resisting his direction that parents should be separated from their children when families cross illegally into the United States, several officials said. The president and his aides in the White House had been pushing a family separation policy for weeks as a way of deterring families from trying to cross the border illegally.
On Monday, Justice Department officials announced that border agents will refer 100 percent of illegal crossings for prosecution, a decision that will most likely result in more family separations.
But one official said the family separation issue is just one part of the president’s broader frustration with the pace of progress on an immigration crackdown, which was a central promise that he made to voters during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump’s efforts to impose a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries were held up for months in the courts. The courts have also interfered with his push to end an Obama-era program to help people brought to the United States illegally as young children.
The episode at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday is the latest evidence of staff turmoil at the White House, where many of Mr. Trump’s top advisers have either been fired or have resigned in recent weeks.
The president fired Rex W. Tillerson, his secretary of state, and pushed out Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, his second national security adviser, replacing him with John R. Bolton, who in turn fired several top aides at the National Security Council.
Those staff changes followed the announced departures of Gary D. Cohn, the president’s top economic adviser in the White House, and Hope Hicks, who was Mr. Trump’s communications director and close confidante. Thomas P. Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, also quit.
Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Kelly, who was the president’s first secretary of homeland security, has also soured in recent months as the president has grown weary of Mr. Kelly’s attempts to impose order on his White House operations. Ms. Nielsen was Mr. Kelly’s chief of staff at the Homeland Security Department, and Mr. Trump nominated her to be Mr. Kelly’s successor on his recommendation.
