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"Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will be stepping down and I would like to thank her for her services," Trump said on Twitter.
"I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current US Commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, will become Acting Secretary of @DHSgov I am confident Kevin will do a great job!" Trump continued.
McAleenan is a relic of the Obama administration. He was sworn in on March 20, 2018 as Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection.
Senior administration officials told CNN that Nielsen had a meeting at the White House with Trump at 5 pm, where she planned to discuss immigration and border issues with him. as well as the way forward. According to one of the sources, she did not intend to resign, she went instead with an agenda.
The source notes Trump's frustration with the laws in force on asylum and his wish that people working for the administration prevent asylum seekers from Central America from entering in the United States, unlike the law.
"I am resigning as Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) effective April 7, 2018," Nielsen wrote in his letter of resignation. "Despite our progress in reforming homeland security for a new age, I determined that the time had come for me to withdraw."
Nielsen has been feeling "in limbo" for a week, said a person close to her, while she endured the wrath of the president at the border.
She is growing on thin ice in the eyes of the president. She did not realize how bad it was when she had left the United States last weekend, but she quickly did so because she came home abruptly.
She had talks – especially on CNN – to try to improve the president's perception of it, said the source close to Nielsen, but without much success.
"Nothing that she could do or say could change the way the president started to look at it," said Nielsen's close source.
That said, she was ready to be fired at any time, but she did not know that Sunday's meeting would be imminent.
Tumultuous mandate
Nielsen has had a tumultuous term in which Trump has consistently increased the pressure on his team to deliver on his immigration promises, which he says is one of the biggest problems. fundamentals of its base of political supporters.
Trump privately confessed that Nielsen had not secured the border nor enacted stricter immigration rules, even though she had become the face of policies that critics of the administration had called them heartless and illegal.
In recent weeks, officials have sounded the alarm over the increase in the number of migrants on the southern border, pointing out that the demographics evolution was one of the most reasons for the multitude of problems they faced. McAleenan said at the end of last month that the United States was about to meet more than 100,000 migrants in March alone, making it "the highest month since 2008".
"At the moment we are facing an emergency and we need to treat it as such," Nielsen told Chris Cuomo at CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time" on Thursday. Nielsen, who served in the administration of President George W. Bush, never overcame internal skepticism regarding his allegiance to Trump. She joined the administration as chief of staff to John Kelly, Trump's first secretary of Homeland Security.
When Kelly joined the West Wing as Chief of Staff, Nielsen followed and became Assistant Chief of Staff to help Kelly be rigorous in her staff.
The role did not gain his popularity, but he helped her to gain Trump's trust enough to elect her to the Cabinet position.
But at the agency that deals with border protection and immigration issues – the problem of Trump's signature – it was inevitable that Nielsen would find himself in the president's line of sight .
After a previous Cabinet meeting at which Trump reprimanded him for not acting strongly enough against illegal immigration, Nielsen considered resigning, sources close to the case said.
She did not do it then and became one of the public faces of a controversial policy that separated families from the southern border.
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