Homeland Security Chief Resisted White House Pressure on Immigrant Program
White House officials were pushing the Department of Homeland Security to announce this week that they were ending those protections for Honduras and Nicaragua ..
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly telephoned Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and pressed her on the matter, a White House official said. The official said the point of his call was to get her to make a decision, saying she was delaying too long. Others said the pressure from the White House was to end the protections.
“As with many issues, there were a variety of views inside the administration on a policy. The acting secretary took those views and advice the path forward for TPS and made her decision based on the law,” said Jonathan Hoffman, spokesman for Homeland Security.
.. Mr. Kelly, when he was Homeland Security secretary, offered a limited extension of the same protective status for Haitians earlier this year and advised immigrants protected by the program to prepare to leave. He also signaled that protections for people from other nations were likely to end, as well.
.. “The White House came down on her really hard” before and after the decisions were announced.
.. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the protected status for Nicaragua would end, but the roughly 5,000 immigrants in the U.S. under the program would have until January 2019 to either leave the country or apply for another immigration status if they are eligible.
.. Ms. Duke is expected to leave the agency when a permanent successor is approved by the Senate. Mr. Hoffman, however, said he knew of no plans for Ms. Duke to leave.