Trump sees an obstacle to his path on immigration: his own officials

WASHINGTON – Stephen Miller was furious – again.

Architect of President Trump's immigration agenda, Mr. Miller presided over a meeting in the White House crisis room last month, when he asked why government officials together on the spot took so much time to execute his plans.

A settlement to deny benefits to immigrants – a change that Miller had repeatedly predicted to be "transformative" – ​​was still going through the approval process after more than two years. Is he complaining. The same has been true for the new rules that would override court-ordered protections for migrant children. They were still not finished, he added, underlining Ronald D. Vitiello, acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"You should be working on this settlement all day, every day," he shouted, as two attendees told the meeting. "It should be your first thought when you wake up. And that should be the last thought you have before you go to bed. And sometimes, you should not go to bed.

A few weeks after this meeting, the consequences of the frustration of Mr. Miller and the president he led had a dramatic effect.

Trump withdrew Mr. Vitiello's candidacy for ICE's permanent leadership and chased Kirstjen Nielsen, his Secretary of Homeland Security. Associate Acting Secretary Claire Grady and Secret Service Director Randolph D. Alles are also leaving. And the White House has made it clear that others, including L. Francis Cissna, head of US citizenship and immigration services, and John Mitnick, the department's general advisor, would probably leave soon.

In a tweet on Saturday, Mr Trump insisted that he was "not frustrated" by the situation at the border, where he said for months that a crisis threatens security. from the country. But unable to deliver on his central promise of the 2016 campaign, he overcame his frustration with the top immigration officials in his administration.

And behind this purge is Mr. Miller, the 33-year-old senior advisor to the White House. Although immigration is the issue that dominated Trump's mandate, the president has little interest in understanding how to turn his instinct into reality. So it's Mr. Miller, a fierce ideologue who was a congressional spokesperson before joining the Trump campaign, who fashioned politics, exasperated the liberty groups and provoked a bitter struggle within the United States. # 39; administration.

White House officials insisted on journalists last week to let them know that they had no choice but to act against those in charge of the administration. who do not want or can not make their agencies produce results. A senior White House administration official, who asked anonymity to discuss what he called a sensitive subject, said that many of the fundamental priorities of the White House, which has been identified by the White House as the most important one. administration had been "going too slowly or in the wrong direction".

But current and former officials of these agencies, who have also asked for anonymity to discuss controversial relations with the White House, describe a different reality.

The purge, they said, was the culmination of several months of clashes with Miller and others surrounding the president, who repeatedly called for the implementation of legally questionable, unrealistic, unrealistic, or contrary to the law. And when officials explained why, it made even more furious a White House that had decided to make swift and radical changes to laws that were decades old.

On the other hand, many of the leaders who clashed at the White House were presidential appointees, who share his overall goal of limiting immigration to the United States. To that end, they have already succeeded in reducing the number of refugees admitted to the United States, imposing a ban on travel to Muslim-majority countries, speeding up denaturalization procedures, slowing down the processing of asylum applications in ports of entry and to develop proposals for the limitation of work permits. for spouses of high-tech workers.

"I do not think the president's house is really cleaning up," said Thomas D. Homan, former interim director of the ICE and a staunch supporter of the president's immigration program. "I think he's adjusting the reset button."

A White House spokesman declined a request for comment. But even several of the far-right anti-immigrant groups have reacted in a mixed way to the treatment of immigration officials, targeted by MM. Trump and Miller.

Center for Studies on Immigration tweeted that "Nielsen became tough at the end of his term, but it was largely too little, too late." The Federation for American Immigration Reform wrote"Under Francis Cissna's leadership, the USCIS has released a steady stream of policy and regulatory changes that are firmly in line with President Trump's immigration agenda. To withdraw it would be a serious mistake.

But that was not enough for Miller and his White House allies to feel Mr. Trump's constant pressure.

The asylum laws, which are at the root of the most striking manifestation of the immigration issue, are undoubtedly the main point of contention within the administration: the hundreds of thousands of families of migrants from Central America who have moved to the south-western border, fleeing violence and violence. poverty.

Last year, at a teleconference with the 50 or 60 government officials, Mr. Miller asked, Tuesday afternoon, why almost all the families who were asking for asylum were crossing the first one. obstacle – a selection interview to determine "credible fear" of persecution if they were returned to their country of origin.

Mr. Miller and other members of the White House were outraged by the fact that 90% or more of the applicants had passed the first selection, a concern also under the Bush administration. Immigration judges ultimately refuse almost 20% of asylum applications, but due to a backlog of several hundred thousand cases, many asylum seekers wait years before their case be heard for the second time, which gives them the opportunity to obtain a work permit. , build roots and disappear in the United States.

For Miller, the asylum process was a huge loophole that needed to be filled. He also criticized the asylum officers of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, who organized the screenings, for having a cultural bias that made them too friendly to asylum seekers. "You have to tighten up," insisted Miller.

Immigration officials participating in the teleconference did not deny that too many migrants were granted asylum in the initial screening for "credible fear". But the rules of conduct for the screenings have been legalized by Congress and are meant to be generous so that persecuted people have a real opportunity to seek asylum. Officials said the agency could not do more.

Listening to Mr. Miller, the caller 's recall was almost as if Mr. Miller wanted the asylum officers to ignore the law. At one point during the call, Mr. Cissna broke out in frustration.

"Enough, enough, come down," he said.

But such pressure from the White House was not unique, according to officials from several agencies.

For example, a federal judge said last week that early in the administration, the White House had unduly lobbied officials of Immigration and Citizenship Services for that they end the immigration program for Haiti called Temporary Protection Status.

The judge said the decision to end the program in 2017 was against the law and said the White House had strongly influenced the department.

More recently, White House officials insisted at a Tuesday afternoon teleconference that border patrol officers, rather than asylum officers, conduct credible fear. The idea, they said, was that border patrol officers could process the interviews quickly and reduce waiting times by several days to schedule a meeting with an asylum officer.

Many immigration officers have shrunk from this idea. Assigning agents to interviews would force them to leave their main roles in ports and along the border. Even worse, the asylum laws require investigators to undergo training for up to two months, which would put a strain on border patrol posts already in place. understaffed.

But even if they could be trained, officials at the White House said, logistics would be a nightmare. Congested border patrol posts – many of which resemble small rural police stations – have not been set up to conduct two-hour interviews with hundreds of migrants flocking daily from border communities.

When the idea was unveiled in early April, immigrant rights advocates accused the Trump administration of trying to prevent the migrants from having a real chance of getting the job done. get asylum.

"Border patrol officers are simply not qualified to do so," said Eleanor Acer, Refugee Program Director at Human Rights First. "This will put unfit, untrained and unqualified agents in charge of determining who deserves life-saving protection in the United States."

For Mr. Miller and other White House officials, it was another case where the law and government machinations prevented the necessary changes. And they think that there are many others.

In November, while Mr. Trump publicly criticized the dangers of migrant caravans from Central America, a White House policy advisor launched the idea of: take the migrants who were apprehended in so-called sanctuaries represented by the Democrats. Internal security officials, who saw the idea as a political reward, resisted.

When Ms. Nielsen did not give the President the answer that he was looking for, he turned to Kevin McAleenan, the Commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, and asked him to prevent the migrants from entering the country. Mr. Trump told Mr. McAleenan that he would forgive him any legal problem, according to officials aware of the conversation – although he denied in a tweet Saturday night.

Ms. Nielsen's refusal to close the southern border seems to be the last straw for Mr. Trump. After forcing his resignation, he appointed Mr. McAleenan Acting Secretary of the Department.

But Mr. Miller remains dissatisfied. Lately, he has made it clear to immigration officials and other people at the White House that he remains frustrated with the still-pending regulations on social assistance benefits. for immigrants. After nearly two years of painstaking work and more than 200,000 public comments, the 447-page rule should be published.

And it is not clear that the political bloodletting is over. Mr. Cissna and Mr. Mitnick remain in the limbo of the bureaucracy, having received neither their documents of march, nor an explicit reprieve. Although Mr. McAleenan is now Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, there are still rumors that Mr. Trump would like someone to be the permanent head of the department.

In immigration agencies, there is a lingering rumor that Trump could still appoint an immigration czar to better coordinate, and in some cases control, the vast bureaucracy of immigration.