{"id":16071,"date":"2019-04-07T17:49:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T00:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=16071"},"modified":"2019-04-07T17:49:18","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T00:49:18","slug":"homeland-security-secretary-kirstjen-nielsen-leaving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=16071","title":{"rendered":"Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen leaving"},"content":{"rendered":"

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen submitted her resignation to President Donald Trump Sunday night, in an unexpected move that appears related to the president\u2019s ongoing rage over the number of Central American families and asylum-seekers coming into the United States.<\/p>\n

Kevin McAleenan, the head of Customs and Border Protection, will serve as acting DHS secretary. It\u2019s not yet clear whether Trump will formally nominate a successor to Nielsen in the near future.<\/p>\n

Nielsen, the sixth head of the Department of Homeland Security and Trump\u2019s second appointee (she was confirmed in December 2017 after mentor John Kelly left to become White House chief of staff), has arguably been the most aggressive secretary in the department\u2019s short history in cracking down on immigration \u2014 with her legacy likely to be defined among progressives by the\u00a0\u201czero tolerance\u201d prosecution policy<\/a>\u00a0of late spring and early summer 2018 that resulted in the\u00a0separation of thousands of families<\/a>\u00a0at the US\/Mexico border.<\/p>\n

None of it appears to have been enough for Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Nielsen\u2019s resignation was preceded on Thursday night by the abrupt withdrawal of the nomination of\u00a0acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Ron Vitiello<\/a>\u00a0to formally lead the agency, with Trump telling reporters Friday morning that he wanted to go in a \u201ctougher direction.\u201d While it\u2019s not yet clear whether Trump requested Nielsen\u2019s resignation or not, it certainly appears as if that \u201ctougher direction\u201d is extending to a new DHS secretary. (Earlier in the week, it was reported that Trump was considering a White House-based \u201cimmigration czar\u201d to coordinate various immigration-related agencies \u2014 most of which are under the aegis of DHS.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen submitted...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16072,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071\/revisions\/16072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}