By Paul Ingrassia
Former Kansas Secretary of State and Trump ally Kris Kobach discussed the problems within the DHS that resulted in the ouster of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who will step down on April 10th.
“Leadership [at the DHS] has been unwilling to execute many of the President’s plans,” Kobach told Tucker Carlson Monday, adding, “I have been in the room when the president has given express orders to leadership at DHS and been assured that yes, those orders will be carried out, and then a year later nothing has happened.”
Kobach recommended that DHS could implement certain policies immediately that would help curb border crossings, such as publishing the final version of the regulation that would supersede the Flores settlement stipulating how entire family units could be detained together.
He also recommended deploying FEMA trailers to border cities and military bases to set up processing centers so that asylum claims could be expedited by immigration judges, removing the incentive for asylum seekers to continue migrating without penalty to the United States.
“Instead of just turning loose these bogus asylum applicants onto the American streets never to be seen again, let’s put them in mobile homes, let’s process their claims, ship the immigration judges in,” Kobach said. “Have the claims processed right there, as soon as their claims are denied, put them on a passenger plane and fly them back home.”
Kobach also warned Mexico that they cannot allow their citizens to continue sending remittances back home.
“Unless you sign the Safe Third Country Agreement, so that any asylum applicant has to apply to the safe first country they step foot in. They can’t walk all the way through Mexico and then say, ‘Oh, we’re applying for asylum here in the United States.’”
Carlson also brought up Barack Obama’s Saturday remarks at a town hall in Berlin, in which Obama voiced concerns about progressives forming a “circular firing squad” against anyone who believes immigrants should make efforts to assimilate into their new country.
“Multiculturalism and political correctness has gone so far over the edge that now to even say anything that suggests to anyone who came to America to adopt the language of our country and to appreciate the United States Constitution is to be somehow racist or intolerant,” Kobach said.
“There’s nothing wrong with [having shared values and principles.] Every great nation has done that.”
These comments come amid major overhauls to the DHS, which saw the withdrawal of Trump’s nominee for ICE director, Ronald Vitiello, in addition to Nielsen, whose failure to implement Trump’s asylum agenda fully was reported to have factored into her departure.
There’s a chance more departures are coming. Stephen Miller, the White House’s senior policy adviser, is also reported to have been put in charge of all immigration and border policy, according to the Washington Post.
Miller’s ascendancy over border policy in recent weeks may lead to more departures in the DHS and other agencies. Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Lee Cissna, and the DHS’s general counsel, John Mitnick’s, names have circulated in recent reports about rumored other potential departures.
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