Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke is furious with the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, who called her on Monday and demanded she expel thousands of Honduran immigrants that have residency permits due to natural disasters.
Gen. Kelly is supposed to be the adult in the room, but as we've seen since he became Trump's COS, he's nothing but.
The Washington Post is reporting:
On Monday, as the Department of Homeland Security prepared to extend the residency permits of tens of thousands of Honduran immigrants living in the United States, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly called Acting Secretary Elaine Duke to pressure her to expel them, according to current and former administration officials.
Duke refused to reverse her decision and was angered by what she felt was a politically driven intrusion by Kelly and Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, who also called her about the matter, according to officials with knowledge of Monday’s events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Kelly is claiming he's upset with Duke's "lack of decisiveness" but that doesn't hold water.
The details are important. There are a substantial number of immigrants in the US from a handful of Caribbean basin nations where there were either natural disasters or human rights crises which led to the decision to allow immigrants from those countries to stay in the US under Temporary Protected Status. The Trump administration’s policy goal is to change those country designations and expel those people.
Elaine Duke is basically in the process of doing just that. She’s already done it with Nicaraguans. She’s just not going fast enough apparently.
Helping the peoples of other nations that have faced terrible natural and human rights crisis's is something a narcissistic personality would never be interested in.
Officials are saying that Kelly wants this to happen fast so it doesn't undermine Kirstjen M. Nielsen's nomination to be head of the DHS.
“He was persistent, telling her he didn’t want to kick the can down the road, and that it could hurt [Nielsen’s] nomination,” said one administration official. Duke held her ground, the official said.
“She was angry. To get a call like that from Asia, after she’d already made the decision, was a slap in the face.”
By the way, her confirmation hearing was a breeze.
And next year many others needing help are in their cross-hairs.
Another 50,000 Haitians and 200,000 Salvadorans were nervously awaiting the decision, as their residency permits will expire early next year. Trump administration officials have repeatedly cited the TPS program as an example of what they say is U.S. immigration policy gone awry, because a program designed to be temporary should not be used to grant long-term residency in the United States.
