Thread: Senate Confirms Trump's Pick for Homeland Security Secretary

Senate Confirms Trump's Pick for Homeland Security Secretary



Tuesday, December 5, 2017 08:14 PM



By: Reuters


The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump's choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a post that opened after John Kelly became Trump's chief of staff earlier this year.


Senators voted 62-37 to confirm Kirstjen Nielsen, formerly Kelly's deputy in the White House and his chief of staff when he led DHS. She is considered a cyber security expert and previously served in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush.


Nielsen, 45, will take the reins of a department with more than 240,000 employees responsible for immigration enforcement, U.S. border and airport security, disaster response, and protecting U.S. infrastructure from cyber attacks.


The agency is at the center of Trump's efforts to enact broad changes to the U.S. immigration system.


Elaine Duke, a civil servant and the DHS deputy secretary, had been serving as acting secretary since Kelly's departure for the White House in July.


In the last five months she ha been responsible for several controversial DHS decisions, including the end of temporary protected status for thousands of immigrants living in the United States. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a DHS entity, came under criticism for its response to the humanitarian disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria when it struck Puerto Rico in September.


In a statement, Duke said she looked forward to working as Nielsen's deputy, and said Nielsen has "a deep understanding of the issues facing the Department."


Eleven Democrats voted with nearly all Republicans to confirm Nielsen. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander did not vote, and no Republicans voted against her confirmation.


House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, said in a statement that Nielsen would bring "the expertise and leadership needed to successfully run the Department."


Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson said in a statement that Nielsen had not yet shown "she has the ability to lead a workforce of 240,000 while keeping the country safe and secure," and said DHS had so far been used as a "political tool of the White House."




https://www.newsmax.com/politics/art.../05/id/830107/

This is a prime example of where the Secretary needs to remember that Trump calls the shots or her stint there will be very very short.

Bad hire of a DACA amnesty supporter. Furthermore, retaining Duke's in DHS as her deputy is also another bad choice. I stand by my original comment in another thread that this is more a General John Kelly choice rather than a Trump choice. I get it that Trump had to sign off on her, but I still think she was hand picked by Kelly.

LADY DACA – Pro-Amnesty, Bush Bureaucrat With Ties to ‘Never Trump’ Movement Confirmed to Lead DHS

297

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

by JOHN BINDER5 Dec 2017Washington, D.C.


The United States Senate voted to confirm former President George W. Bush bureaucrat Kirstjen Nielsen to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) despite her ties to the “Never Trump” movement and seemingly having no experience working on immigration-related issues.


The Senate confirmed Nielsen in a 62-37 vote on Tuesday, making her the new head of the agency which is tasked with carrying out President Trump’s pro-American immigration
reform agenda.






When Nielsen was chosen by Trump to lead DHS, members of the failed “Never Trump” movement, Breitbart News reported, immediately praised her nomination as a win for the national security establishment. Never Trumpers championing Nielsen’s nomination included pro-amnesty DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, former Bush official Frances Townsend, and former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.


Previously, as Breitbart News extensively reported, Nielsen worked as a special assistant to Bush and as the chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda on Risk & Resilience Committee.


While working for Bush, the administration — immediately following hurricane Katrina in 2005 — temporarily dismantled pro-American worker laws, such as suspending sanctions for employers who willingly hire illegal aliens, and waving the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which mandated that federal contractors pay workers the average regional wage.

advertisement

The impact of Bush’s decision had a devastating effect on working-class Americans who saw their jobs wash away with Katrina, as Breitbart News reported. The results amounted to an estimated 30,000 illegal aliens entering the Gulf Coast region to take thousands of American blue-collar jobs that would have otherwise gone to impacted working-class Americans.


As chair of the World Economic Forum committee, Nielsen promoted mass immigration to Europe and the U.S., claiming Western nations did not have a choice and needed to accept millions of migrants. That report, as Breitbart News reported, was co-authored by executives from multinational corporations and world banks.


Not only does Nielsen’s prior experience run contrary to Trump’s populist-nationalist agenda on immigration, but her current views on illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens ignore the president’s pro-American agenda.


During a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, Nielsen said she believed that Americans “owe” amnesty to illegal aliens who have been shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“I believe that we must and we owe it to them to find a permanent solution,” she said of passing a DACA amnesty that could potentially lead to a chain migration of 9.9 million to 19 million foreign nationals pouring into the U.S. legally. “It’s no way to expect anyone to live a month or two months at a time,” said Nielsen, even though the DACA work-permits each last for two years.


Nielsen also downplayed Trump’s border wall plan, the most important immigration initiative, during the committee hearing, saying “There is no need for a wall from sea to shining sea,” Breitbart News reported.


Instead, Nielsen touted “technology” along the southern border as being just as necessary to stop illegal immigration. The technology-based “virtual-wall” narrative is often used by Democrats and Republican establishment to fake sympathy for the public’s insistence on a border wall.


Even when it comes to how to best deter illegal immigration, Nielsen fell back on a bureaucratic, globalist-aligned position rather than one taken from Trump’s pro-American immigration principles.


For instance, Nielsen said that the U.S. should deter illegal immigration from Central America with a quasi-nation-building plan whereby taxpayer money is used to help better the economies of places like Guatamala and El Salvador.

“We have to increase the prosperity there,” Nielsen said. “There’s a variety of programs, you and I have discussed, including the Alliance for Prosperity. But to really help the community find jobs, track the private sector, and enable the community to be resilient in such a way that it in of itself provides the type of environment that citizens would want to stay.”


Nielsen additionally contradicted Attorney General Jeff Sessions in her hearing, concedingto Democrats that she will issue a directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to focus primarily on deporting criminal illegal aliens.


“Everybody in the country illegally is subject to being deported, so people come here and they stay here a few years and somehow they think they are not subject to being deported – well, they are,” Sessions previously said in April.


Following her hearing, an Axios report revealed that Nielsen’s ignoring of Trump’s immigration principles and pro-amnesty views had “reduced” the president’s leverage on immigration issues.



http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...d-to-lead-dhs/

Nielsen additionally contradicted Attorney General Jeff Sessions in her hearing, conceding to Democrats that she will issue a directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to focus primarily on deporting criminal illegal aliens.


“Everybody in the country illegally is subject to being deported, so people come here and they stay here a few years and somehow they think they are not subject to being deported – well, they are,” Sessions previously said in April.

Here we go again, back to the same old B.S. enforcement policies of the Obama administration!