Trump says DHS Secretary leaving

Washington: Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security who has become a face of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration push, is leaving the administration, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter Sunday.

Nielsen did not resign willingly, a person close to her said, but was under pressure to do so. Nielsen did not fight nor grovel to keep her job, the source said. Nielsen should be staying for a week of transition, another White House official said.

McAleenan is a holdover from the Obama administration. He was sworn in on March 20, 2018, as commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. He is expected to serve as the acting secretary “in the short term,” meaning he is not expected to be in the position for the long term, according to a White House official.

Senior administration officials said that Nielsen had a 5.00 pm, meeting at the White House with Trump where she was planning to discuss with him the immigration and border issues and a path forward. She had no intention of resigning, according to one of the sources, but rather was going there with an agenda. Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with the situation at the border, which has seen an influx in migrants, predominantly from Northern Triangle countries.

In California on Friday, a senior administration official tells CNN, Trump told border agents he wanted them to stop letting people cross the border, despite the fact that Central American asylum seekers according to US law can  do so.

Nielsen “believed the situation was becoming untenable with the President becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests,” a senior administration official tells CNN.

“I hereby resign from the position of Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), effective April 7th 2019,” Nielsen wrote in her resignation letter. “Despite our progress in reforming homeland security for a new age, I have determined that it is the right time for me to step aside.”

Nielsen later tweeted that she “agreed to stay on as Secretary through Wednesday, April 10th to assist with an orderly transition and ensure that key DHS missions are not impacted.”

Removing Nielsen and installing McAleenan as acting secretary presents issues for the line of succession. Putting McAleenan in charge skips over acting Deputy Secretary Claire Grady, who also serves in the Senate confirmed role as the Undersecretary of Management, which raises questions about her future. A senior administration official told CNN that legally Grady is next in line and will have to go in order for McAleenan to assume the role of acting secretary. Another official, asked about this question, told CNN there are issues that need to be addressed before McAleenan can

take over.

In a series of tweets, Nielsen said, “it has been an honor of a lifetime to serve with the brave men and women” of DHS and repeated what she also said in her resignation letter that she “could not be prouder of and more humbled by their service.”

Nielsen has felt “in limbo” for the last week, a person close to her says, as she bore the brunt of the President’s anger over the border.

She’s been increasingly on thin ice in the eyes of the President. She did not realize how dire it was when she left the US last weekend, but quickly did, as she abruptly returned.

She did interviews — including on CNN — to try and improve the President’s souring view of her, the source close to Nielsen said, but to little avail.

“Nothing she could do or say could change how the President started viewing her,” the source close to Nielsen said.

That said, she was prepared to be fired at any moment, but did not know going into Sunday’s meeting it would be imminent.

Democrats immediately reacted to the news. “Hampered by misstep after misstep, Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure at the Department of Homeland Security was a disaster from the start. It is clearer now than ever that the Trump Administration’s border security and immigration policies – that she enacted and helped craft – have been an abysmal failure and have helped create the humanitarian crisis at the border,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson in a statement.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, acknowledged Nielsen’s challenges in a statement and expressed confidence in McAleenan and whomever the President nominated later.

“Secretary Nielsen served her country honorably as Homeland Security Secretary, despite facing numerous challenges including dire conditions at our southwest border,” Rogers said. “Although Commissioner McAleenan will have his work cut out for him, I am confident the department is in capable hands. I look forward to working with McAleenan in his new role and to learning who the president intends to nominate on a permanent basis.”