Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was reportedly shown the door Sunday, during a meeting with President Donald Trump. It’s part of a larger overhaul of the entire department at the hands of top aide Stephen Miller, CBS News reported.
“Nielsen’s expected departure is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, according to a senior U.S. official,” the report said. “It’s unclear whether Nielsen is deciding to resign voluntarily, or whether she has been pressured to resign. Nielsen has served as DHS secretary since December 2017, and questions about how much longer she might last have swirled for months, as the president continues to articulate his frustrations about illegal immigration.”
This week, it was revealed Miller convinced Trump to drop his appointee for ICE after Senate Leader Mitch McConnell changed the rules to push the president’s appointees through faster and without public debate.
Trump reportedly dismissed current ICE acting director Ronald Vitiello from consideration for the permanent position because Miller wanted someone “tougher.”
“This is part of an increasingly desperate effort by Stephen to throw people under the bus when the policies he has advocated are not effective,” a senior White House official said. “Once it becomes clear that Stephen’s policies aren’t working, he tells the president ‘they’re not the right people.’”
The Wall Street Journal has already issued a rebuke of Miller and his brand of politics. The editorial board claimed that there could have been a deal on immigration reform, but it was Miller that stopped the White House from supporting the bill. McConnell previously said that he would never pass a bill that Trump wouldn’t sign.
“As it happens, Mr. Trump’s history is also blinkered,” the Journal‘s editors wrote. “In February 2018 he was offered a deal that included money for the wall in exchange for legalizing the Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. But the President walked away because White House aide Stephen Miller and GOP restrictionists told him he’d be better off making immigration an election issue.”
Miller has a tendency to pass “alternative facts” off as actual facts, as Fox News host Chris Wallace noted in an interview last weekend.