Our reporter Zolan Kanno-Youngs interviewed over a dozen Biden transition advisers and present and former officers on the Division of Homeland Safety, searching for clues into what priorities the incoming administration will carry to the division.
Zolan answered a number of questions on what he discovered.
Donald Trump centered a lot of his 2016 marketing campaign on immigration points, and lots of of his main initiatives as president ran via the Division of Homeland Safety. How a lot of an impact did Trump have on the division’s mission and its day-to-day operations? Would you say he’s been profitable at finishing up his coverage objectives?
President Trump has had immense affect on the Division of Homeland Safety. The president centered his marketing campaign on the border wall and limiting immigration into america, and people themes carried over to his time period in workplace. The division was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults with a broad array of tasks, responding to pure disasters, terrorism and threats to aviation, maritime safety and cybersecurity.
However for a lot of his time period, Trump has had a easy measure of success for the company: reducing the variety of unlawful crossings on the border and constructing his wall. He has pulled his secretaries away from journeys to debate different safety issues on the final minute to debate (and at occasions berate about) the border. He repeatedly questioned how briskly they had been developing the wall, siphoning billions from the Protection Division within the course of and directing his officers to file lawsuits in opposition to non-public landowners.
And whereas the wall is just not constructed from sea to shining sea, Trump has certainly modified the U.S. immigration system. A maze of insurance policies have created an “invisible wall,” limiting the power of asylum seekers to stay within the nation. The refugee system has been gutted. And when he refocused his marketing campaign in opposition to protesters to border himself as a “legislation and order” president, he turned to D.H.S. once more. Most of the tactical brokers despatched to Portland to conflict with demonstrators had been from the division.
Activists and proponents of immigrants’ rights have lengthy known as for the dismantling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is housed inside D.H.S. Are such concepts one thing {that a} President Biden will entertain?
No. The president-elect has by no means known as for abolishing any of these businesses. Don’t count on the brand new president to maneuver any D.H.S. businesses to different departments, both (The Trump administration proposed transferring the Secret Service to Treasury, and there have been requires Biden to think about transferring Citizenship and Immigration Providers, the nation’s authorized immigration company, to the Justice Division).