The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Says He Wants To Go "Tougher" On Immigration; Shakes Up DHS Leadership

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen is leaving her post, President Trump announced as he continues to focus on restricting border crossings amid a recent surge. This episode: political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, national political correspondent Mara Liasson and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Erin, Jill, Alex, and Katie, and we're visiting the capital of Kazakhstan. Last time I was here, the city was called Astana, but last month the capital was renamed Nursultan. This podcast was recorded at 12 23 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9th. Just like the name of the Kazakhstani capital, things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Pretty exotic location. I guess we hold your Borat. Oh, I was just gonna say, I guess we have to hold our Borat jokes. You do. Well, the show will be very nice.

Hey there, it is the NPR politics podcast. I am Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Okay, so we sort of have a follow-up to last week in our weekly roundup here, because back then we talked about what the president calls a crisis on the southern border of the U.S. with a surge of new immigrants who are trying to get into the U.S. And this week kicked off with big news, President Trump announcing that the Secretary of Homeland Security,

Kirstjen Nielsen, was leaving her job. What happened? What happened was Kirstjen Nielsen, who has been a very strong supporter and vocal about the president's goals on the border, had not been able to turn those goals into effective policy. President Trump was very frustrated. He blamed her for the spike in asylum seekers on the border. There are many times that he asked her to do things that she pushed back against, not because she disagreed with them, but because she said they couldn't pass constitutional muster. And then finally, he decided that she should go. Well, and the thing is, she's really had this legacy on family separations, where she implemented this very controversial policy that separated

thousands of children from their parents who had crossed illegally into the United States. And President Trump had really wanted her to go through with this. She had initially pushed back some, you know, questioning how far she could go under the law and decided to implement it anyway. And it's been rocky since then, partially because of her ties to John Kelly, who was President Trump's chief of staff, who was later left the administration and her ties to the Bush administration. President Trump has been skeptical of all of those kind of, you know, Republican never Trumpers, not sure who to trust or who to believe. And that's the great irony and tragedy of Kirstjen Nielsen, because she is forever associated with, quote, putting kids in cages. That's what Democrats

would say. But she could never satisfy the president. It was damned if she did and damned if she didn't. But this is definitely part of a much bigger housecleaning at the Department of Homeland Security, which includes a lot of people that John Kelly appointed. So let's get into that. Why is that housecleaning going on and what kind of house cleaning are we talking about here? So right now what we have is President Trump saying that he's appointed Kevin McAleenan, the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, as the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security. There's a problem with that, though, because there's so many actings and such a leadership vacuum within the Department of Homeland Security that by law, the undersecretary for management, who's currently the acting deputy

secretary, is next in line to be the acting secretary. Trump would have to fire her to be able to appoint McAleenan. She's said that she's not necessarily going to step aside to make room for him. So we're going to see something of a house cleaning there, just as the president had pulled the nomination for the head of what would have been the head of ICE, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, who was supposed to be in that. He pulled that just as he was threatening to close the border. So on a fundamental issue that is really the issue that launched President Trump's presidential campaign, he has a crisis on his hands of his own making as far as leadership goes on immigration. And of course, he also got rid of

the head of the Secret Service, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, doesn't necessarily connect it to immigration. But in terms of a crisis of his own making, I don't think Donald Trump would see it that way. I mean, Donald Trump is often a party of one. He doesn't rely on a policy process. He doesn't rely on advice or vetting or kind of policy experience from people in these departments. He decides what he wants to do. He asks his officials to make it happen, and he gets really frustrated when they can't. Well, you mentioned the phrase crisis of his own making. Well, I imagine Donald Trump would argue, as he has been arguing, that there is a crisis on the southern border. I mean, is that why this wave of potential firings and already happened firings and vacancies is happening right now?

What you see is the president lashing out because he's upset with what's now a spike in border apprehensions. Just in February, there were over 76,000 people who were apprehended. While that number is far below the peak of 2000, when there were far more people crossing, that is the highest number in at least five years for people who've been crossing. And the last five months, you've seen 60,000 or more, according to numbers from Customs and Border Protection, who've been apprehended at the border, which is higher than at any time since 2014. Although it is way lower than 2000.

Right. And the president has talked about this as a crisis. Some of his previous claims have not borne out. In other words, it wasn't a crisis with terrorists flooding over the border, as he once said. It wasn't a crisis of a lot of single men coming to take working class jobs away. What it is, is families coming, fleeing violence, political or other kinds in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. That's the spike. Here's the thing.

He's been president, though, for two years, right? I mean, this is his policy, right? This is his administration. This is his country. And securing the homeland is up to the president. And when he talks such a big game on keeping people out of the United States and on taking a harder line on immigration, when you're seeing this spike, it has to make him feel like his policies are under scrutiny, that they're not working. It makes him look weak. And that's why you see this lashing out at the Department of Homeland Security. Although there are two parts to that, because the more people there are at the border, the more pictures there are of people lining up to cross the border and apply for asylum,

the more he can say, see, I told you it was a crisis. It's real. And one of President Trump's most important metrics for success is dominating the media narrative. He doesn't always need to win the argument nationally, but he wants to control the narrative. And he believes that this issue, the issue of immigration, legal, illegal, and otherwise, including asylum seekers who are part of a legal process, is why he won the White House in 2016. And it's going to be one of the most important things to motivate his base in 2020. So he needs it to be front and center. He's keeping it front and center. Having a lot of people at the border is bad, as Domenico said, because it seems like he's not being effective at stopping it. On the other hand, keeps the issue front and

center, which is where he wants it. Well, you talk about him controlling the narrative, and he's kind of ramped up his rhetoric in that vein in the last few weeks. I mean, we had him threatening to close the southern border. We had him say he wants to cut off aid to a few Central American countries where a lot of these immigrants are coming from, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. And then he pulled, like Domenico mentioned, he pulled that ICE nominee, saying that he wants immigration enforcement and policy to go in a tougher direction. That was his wording. First of all, Trump is known for having pretty tough immigration policy, right? So what does this say about what he wants to do going forward? Well, there are a couple of things that

he's asked for that he hasn't gotten. He definitely wants the impression of toughness. And he is willing to make the big gesture, even if it can't pass muster in Congress or in the courts. For instance, shutting down the border, stopping the asylum process altogether, putting punitive tariffs on Mexico if they don't stop immigration and drugs. These are all things that he's threatened to do, and one of which, declaring a national emergency to allow him to spend unappropriated funds on a wall, is now in the court system. But what he hasn't done is something that previous presidents have done when they are facing what they consider to be a crisis, an emergency meeting with congressional leaders to deal with the border situation, a hemispheric summit with the leaders of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to talk

about this. He likes to do things that he can do by himself. He's a party of one. And he gets really frustrated when he can't get them done. I see. So the fact that he hasn't taken that kind of a measure, like had a giant hemispheric meeting or what have you, you're not saying that that means that he's not taking this seriously. You're just saying that that's not how he likes to do things.

No, no. He's taking it very seriously. It's the most important issue. Right. But, you know, Kirstjen Nielsen, remember when she left and she wrote her letter of resignation, she essentially put on Congress the constraints that she's under and that any secretary would be under that have frustrated President Trump. You can hear him in White House event after White House event kind of malign the court system and how long the lines are and how ridiculous it is. All of that would have to change through Congress. But there's nothing that you're seeing coming from this White House to work with Democrats, to work with Republican leaders, to say, hey, let's get some

kind of comprehensive immigration reform kind of bill through, because the meeting place between this White House and how it's moved away from the middle on a lot of these issues, as opposed to President Bush, for example, or John McCain, who'd push this issue, they're moving so far to the other direction that it's making compromise on immigration far less likely. All right, we're going to take a quick break right now, but we'll be right back to talk about what all of this means for 2020. And also Stephen Miller, the man behind much of the White House's hardline immigration policies. Hey, it's Sophia Eisenberg, host of NPR's Ask Me Another, and we're making the month of April all about women in comedy. We've got Greta Lee and Leslie Hedlund from the Netflix

series Russian Doll, the beloved Retta from NBC's Parks and Recreation, and many more. Spread the word, listen, and subscribe now. And we're back. So there are a lot of angles to this immigration story. There's the personnel, which we've talked about. There's human rights. There's policy. Let's get into the politics and specifically the politics of 2020. To what degree do you guys think that the 2020 election is weighing on Trump and causing him to be more forceful on immigration right now? Well, I don't know if it's weighing on him or if he's necessarily considering this specifically for that. We know that politics are always front and center for him. But, you know, this was a foundational issue for him. He ran on kind of ginning up cultural griev But, you know, this was a foundational issue for him. He ran on kind of

ginning up cultural grievances, you know, talking about white grievance in particular, and how the country is changing and not changing for the better. When he has the slogan of make America great again, it's hearkening back to something, some nostalgia, some unspecified time when the country was more American in his version of what it is rather than what it is today, as opposed to an America right now that's headed for by 2044 to be a majority minority country. You know, whether those on the right like that or not, that's actually happening, even if you shut off all the borders today. Right. Yeah. There's no doubt that that's the issue that he started with. And it's going to be front and center in 2020. He believes that's what motivates

his base. Does he have to go bigger this time? Sure. He has to go bigger because it's going to be harder this time to win. Even if he doesn't win the popular vote, he still needs to win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He won all three of them with 77,000 votes last time. And yes, he has to keep his base energized. He has to get more people to turn out for him than did before. I don't know if he has to go bigger, but he has to keep it on the front burner. He has to keep it as a thing. But that means going bigger. In other words, if you already tried building the wall and your national emergency declaration is stuck in the courts, what else are you going to do? And he wants the big gesture.

He doesn't want to just say, oh, I'll make a deal with Congress and meet them in the middle. No, he wants to have something. He's got to keep people talking about a thing that should be outrageous for the people who voted for him in the first place. Gotcha. Well, to pivot a little bit here, let's talk about one man who's always been behind a lot of this hardline immigration policy in the Trump administration. And it's not the president himself. It's Stephen Miller. So, Mara, I want to ask you, why is he making headlines right now? Why are we talking about him now? Well, we're talking about him because he has always been the strongest voice on immigration inside the White House. And now, with the departure of Kirstjen Nielsen and the kind of

housecleaning at DHS, he's going to be very involved in picking the new top immigration officials. And he's a hardliner. He's a restrictionist. He worked for Jeff Sessions before he came onto the Trump team. He's been the person who has really encouraged Trump at every step of the way on immigration to keep faith with his base, his restrictionist base. profile of him. He would tell Latino students to speak English. He would say that school announcements should be in English only. He wore button up shirts and pocket squares, and he ripped apart a button up shirt once with an American flag T-shirt underneath. And his counselors even described him as somebody who would get very upset when the issue of racism or white privilege would come up. I guess my question is, all that lines up

with Trump so squarely, but how did he survive in this White House with such turnover and with Jeff Sessions, who he was so close to being, you know, excised from the Trump administration? Jeff Sessions was a DOJ and Miller was at the White House, and Miller is a survivor. He has always, I think, shown that he's a fiercely loyal staff member. He's been on TV and delivered some of the most heated defenses of the president. And he also is the person, he knows his brief, he is an expert on immigration. Yes, he has this background, this interesting background. He was a conservative contrarian in liberal Santa Monica. He became a kind of teenaged right-wing media star when he went to Duke. But these are views, obviously, that he's held for a very long time. And he's somebody that the president really

likes. He's a speechwriter for the president. He's written some of the most important addresses, including the inaugural, that the president has delivered. And he now has even more influence than ever over this issue. So maybe let's get a little more specific here then. What does Stephen Miller want to do in a world where he gets to pick? There are a number of things that we are familiar with. Obviously, they want to build a wall. If they can't build a wall with Congress's approval, they want a national emergency approved by the court so they can spend unobligated, unappropriated funds to build that wall.

They would like to change the laws governing asylum, make it harder to claim what's called credible fear as a reason for asylum. They would like to make it easier to separate children from families, to deport unaccompanied minors. There are a lot of tweaks they want in the laws governing asylum. And in general, what Miller wants is also a decrease in legal immigration, just overall numbers of immigrants coming to the United States, except, as Trump once expressed, immigrants from Norway. You can interpret that however you want. But that is they would like to have fewer immigrants coming to America. Oh, one more thing I want to get to before we're done here. And that's how would Trump and Miller and other people in the White House, how would they accomplish this

kind of hardline immigration agenda that Mara was just describing here? I mean, don't you need Congress to act? And would Congress approve many of these? Well, you need Congress to act for several of the tweaks to asylum and the ability to deport unaccompanied minors. And that would suggest some kind of a deal, a bigger deal with Congress because they have other priorities. Or maybe you could convene a summit of hemispheric leaders, the leaders of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to talk about how we can stop the flow.

That is actually what previous administrations have done. That's what some of the aid to these countries are supposed to accomplish to take away the motivations for people to flee poverty and violence. President Trump, of course, has done the exact opposite, cut funding to these countries kind of punitively, assuming that then they would cut down on their out-migration. I don't really know how that's supposed to work. You know, a president's limited in his power, Right. And this is why you saw you see it happen to lots of presidents. You had President Obama come in and say that he was going to change the ways of Washington, but then got sucked up by the ways of Washington. You have President Trump, who

essentially comes in making an outsider argument from the complete other end of the spectrum, saying that he's going to come in and he's going to drain the swamp, and he's going to make all these changes. And then he's getting frustrated with his Homeland Security Secretary because he can't implement the kind of hardline measures he wants. He essentially pushes to shut down the government because he's not able to get what he wants and then declares a national emergency over a border wall. All those tactics have failed except in one way, which is all throughout he has kept the issue that he considers to be the most important to him and his voters on the front burner. All right, well, we're just gonna have to leave that there for today. We will be back as soon as there is more political news that you need to know about.

Until then, head to your favorite social media platform, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or others, and search for NPR Politics. Follow us for the latest news and analysis of what's happening. I am Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.