Historically, a more stable DHS has been seen by the government as crucial to the national security of the United States, and DHS officials are saying that no former president has made the DHS this unstable. Furthermore, new DHS leaders will have to begin in the midst of the current immigration issue as well as all of the other problems these programs must deal with.
Supposedly, Trump adviser Stephen Miller has been urging the president to change the leadership of the entire DHS instead of merely focusing on the immigration-related agencies. However, Bush adviser Stewart Baker asserted that “The president doesn’t like the news he’s getting on immigration and has blamed leadership at DHS, but this is not something leadership at the department can fix,” suggesting instead that the problem must be fixed in Congress, “and there doesn’t seem to be any appetite for that.”
The DHS is currently proposing a new plan for illegal immigration policy called “binary choice”, which allows illegal immigrant parents to choose whether to be detained as a family or to be separated so the children aren’t in custody. Before that, the DHS considered a “Remain in Mexico” program, which would’ve made Central American asylum seekers wait in Mexico until their claims are processed instead of releasing them into the country--if it wasn’t already struck down by a California federal judge.
Should the president be targeting the entirety of the DHS in an attempt to solve an immigration-related problem? Will doing so help solve the problem? And is this move by Trump merely an attempt to solve the immigration issue, or is it also an attempt to “drain the swamp”?
Trump has a history of removing many of his own elected agency officials. I don't think you could call it "draining the swamp" because he is draining his own elected officials. In this case I do not feel that targeting the entirety of DHS will solve any issues. However, targeting a few problematic officials might be beneficial to solving immigration related problems. If said officials are causing issues or stifling immigration policy, it is in the best interest to the president to remove and replace them.
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