Ron Vitiello, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol, became deputy commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency in April 2017. A year later he was named acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Three months after that, President Trump appointed him ICE’s “permanent” director.
Vitiello, who endorsed “zero tolerance” for immigrants who crossed illegally through U.S.’s southern border that included separation of families, appeared to be Trump’s kind of guy.
The word “permanent” takes on an ephemeral quality when applied by Trump, who rescinded his nomination of Vitiello to become ICE’s permanent director in April 2019.
Questions remain about why Trump dropped Vitiello.
Here’s the reason Trump gave.
Trump wanted someone “tougher” to run the immigration enforcement agency.
Vitiello had defended the Trump Administration’s policy of separating parents and children during his confirmation hearings.
Vitiello also acknowledged past personal mistakes such as comparing Democrats to the Ku Klux Klan.
“It was a mistake,” he said. “It was a momentary lapse of judgment, and I apologize. It was meant as a joke.”
What a nut!
The Washington Post reported that the abruptness of Trump’s decision came as a shock because Vitiello was scheduled to join Trump that day on a trip to California.
“The decision to ditch Vitiello stupefied Homeland Security officials and lawmakers,” The Post said. “Some ICE officials and Senate aides were so taken aback, they told reporters they thought the White House had made a clerical error.”
Fox News added no further clarification of why Trump changed his mind about Vitiello.
The confusion over Vitiello’s nomination comes as the administration is scrambling to deal with a surge of migrants coming across the border,” Fox reported. “Officials said last week the U.S. was on track to apprehend more than 100,000 border crossers in March — marking a 12-year high.”
CNN reported that Trump changed his mind at the urging of White House adviser Stephen Miller, who Vanity Fair magazine once described as “one of the most evil people to have ever worked for Donald Trump;” The Guardian described as “the nationalist at the heart of Trump’s White House”; and the Southern Poverty Law Center credited with “shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump, which include the zero-tolerance policy, also known as family separation.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/05/politics/ice-director-nomination-pulled/index.html
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/stephen-miller-migrant-boats
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/stephen-miller
Vitiello’s promotion of child separation at the border clearly lacked the toughness of Miller’s position, whose solution to the border crisis was that migrant children be boiled and eaten.
This was meant as a joke (kind of).
