Kirstjen Nielsen was confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security on December 5, 2017.
She resigned in April 2019.
Her primary achievement – if you can call it that — appears to be the Trump Administration’s family separation policy, which the administration created to address the torrent of immigrants fleeing from Mexico and other countries into the United States.
Nielsen became the face of two historically bad public relations fiascos – the separation of children from their parents and the putting of children in metal cages.
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/03/23/family-separation-timeline#2017
The Department of Homeland Security reported on June 16, 2018, that 2,342 children had been separated from their parents in the previous six months after crossing the Southern U.S. border, as part of the Trump Administration’s immigration strategy
The Associated Press reported on June 17, 2018, that hundreds of children were kept in metal cages where lighting stayed on 24 hours a day; children were sleeping under “foil sheets”; older children had to change the diapers of infants and younger children; and there were no books or toys.
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/03/23/family-separation-timeline#2017
Former First Lady Laura Bush, who lives in Texas, called the administration’s separation of children from their parents “cruel” and “immoral” in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
Nielsen responded to criticism of the administration by tweeting: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”
The Washington Post reported that Nielsen’s claim was false.
President Donald Trump said that his administration “had the exact same policy as the Obama administration.”
PolitiFact, the fact-checking website of the Poynter Institute, called this statement “false.”
If your objective was to be as cruel as possible, you would have it achieved it by separating children from their parents and then putting the children in metal cages.
But the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration were not satisfied.
NBC News reported that the administration had no policy of reuniting parents and their children.
Please go back and read the previous sentence again.
Reuters reported in February 2023 that a thousand of the approximately four thousand children separated by the Trump administration had not been reunited with their parents.
Nielsen’s job would have been difficult under any circumstances, but it was made far more difficult because her boss, Donald Trump, was a tyrant who lacked a fundamental understanding of the law.
In their book about Trump, A Very Stable Genius, Washington Post journalists Philip Rucker and Carol Leonning said that Trump “abused,” “harassed,” and “pestered” Nielsen over immigration policy. Trump demanded that she shut down the border with Mexico. Nielsen protested that this would not only be illegal but would be disastrous for the economy because it would cut off trade routes.
When the meeting was finished, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney explained to the president that Nielsen was correct.
The London Guardian reported this segment from the book:
For the rest of the year, A Very Stable Genius reported, Trump increased his bullying of Nielsen, harassing her with hostile phone calls, sometimes at 5 a.m. and pestering her late into the night. He often would call her after watching Lou Dobbs complain about illegal immigration on his Fox News program.
“The president would routinely call Nielsen to say a version of ‘Did you see Lou Dobbs? You’re totally fucking embarrassing me. This is my issue!’ . . . Sometimes, Trump would refer to one of Dobbs’s proposals and say, ‘Kirstjen, just do it. Just do it,’” the book said.
“’But we can’t do it,’ Nielsen would explain, usually because whatever Dobbs had uttered on TV was against the law.
“After one particularly hostile exchange with Trump, Nielsen called Dobbs and offered to contribute to his reporting.
“Trump phoned Nielsen hours later. “Did you call Lou Dobbs?” he asked. She said yes. Trump replied: “That’s great. Lou says you’re very smart!”
