President Donald Trump will nominate Kirstjen Nielsen, who as top aide to his White House chief of staff has sought to instill order in Trump's team, to lead the US Department of Homeland Security, the White House said in a statement on Wednesday, 11 October.
If confirmed by the Senate, Nielsen would take the reins of a sprawling department with more than 240,000 employees that is responsible for US border and airport security, immigration policy, disaster response, refugee admissions and other matters.
Nielsen, 45, is a cyber security expert with a considerable resume in homeland security that includes work at the department’s Transportation Security Administration and on former Republican President George W Bush’s White House Homeland Security Council.
Nielsen was retired Marine Corps General John Kelly's chief of staff when he was secretary of homeland security during the opening months of Trump's presidency. Kelly brought her to the White House as his deputy when Trump named him chief of staff in July to replace Reince Priebus after only six months on the job.
The nomination requires Senate confirmation. Nielsen's departure from the White House would mark the latest upheaval in Trump's White House team. She was responsible for carrying out some of Kelly's orders on who gets access to the president.
As a result, she has irritated some White House officials who now have limited contact with Trump, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Kelly has sought to bring more order to the chaotic West Wing since replacing Priebus. Trump has welcomed the changes to some extent, although he has privately confided to friends that the limitations on access to the Oval Office sometimes go too far. Putting Nielsen into the Homeland Security post will allow Trump and Kelly to keep a close eye on the department, but getting her out of the White House could permit some of Kelly's strictness to be relaxed.
The department has been led by an acting secretary, Elaine Duke, since Kelly took the White House post.
Cyber security is one of the primary issues under the Homeland Security Department's portfolio. Nielsen previously worked at a cyber think tank at George Washington University, blocks from the White House, and is considered well-versed in some of the more technical missions at the department, such as sharing cyber-threat information with the private sector.
The department was created after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States exposed cracks in the country’s homeland security apparatus.
The appointment comes at a busy time for the department, with one of its agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, overseeing disaster relief in hurricane-hit Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida, as well as in wildfire-ravaged areas of California. The department is also responsible for US border security.
The department is a major player in implementing Trump's aggressive stance toward deporting illegal immigrants, as well as vetting the lower number of refugees Trump has decided to allow into the United States and devising his travel ban on six Muslim-majority nations, North Korea and certain Venezuelans.
(This piece has been edited for length, and has been published in an arrangement with Reuters.)
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