President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is being prepped for her confirmation hearing by a former President George W. Bush official who has criticized a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
A report by CyberScoop reveals that Trump’s DHS nominee, Kirstjen Nielsen, has sought advice in advance of her congressional committee hearing from Thad Bingel, who served in U.S. Customs and Border Protection under Bush.
The report notes:
Thad Bingel, a consultant with the Command Group, is in some ways excellently qualified to advise and assist Nielsen. In the middle of the last decade, he was in charge of legislative affairs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, one of DHS’s larger component agencies, before being promoted to be chief of staff. He left in 2009 to found Command — a “full service” security consultancy that boasts an extensive roster of former U.S. security officials — with other Bush-era DHS officials, Ralph Basham and Steve Atkiss, but has remained in touch with former colleagues.
Bingel’s clients, according to former officials, include companies competing for DHS business, an apparent conflict of interest that has caused a lot of heartache at the department, according to current and former officials.
Bingel has made previous comments that put him at odds with Trump’s single biggest initiative: Building a wall along the southern border.
Reportedly, in a previous interview with an Australian news service, ABC News, Bingel slammed the idea of constructing a border wall to safeguard the country from illegal immigration and massive cartel drug flow.
“Anyone who thinks the wall is a solution in itself is wrong,” Bingel reportedly told ABC News, with the news agency even posting the comment to their social media page.
https://twitter.com/ABCNews24/status/771668991592964096
In the Washington Post, Bingel made similar comments about Trump’s border wall, downplaying the construction of the barrier as not being a viable solution to illegal immigration.
While a wall along much of the border might theoretically be possible, said Thad Bingel, a former senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, “is it desirable? At what cost, and what do you give up to pay for that?’’
Bingel — who was involved in border fence-building during the George W. Bush administration and is now a partner at Command Consulting Group in Washington — added: “Every wall can be circumvented. People can go under it, they can go over it. . . . No one should go into this with the idea that if you just build the right kind of wall, no one will get through.’’
In the New York Times, Bingel questioned Trump’s border wall, saying it would keep U.S. Border Patrol agents from being able to see activity occurring on the other side of the border.
Nielsen’s hearing is set for November 8 in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, where she will be introduced by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).
As Breitbart News reported, Nielsen’s nomination to head DHS has been praised by the cheap foreign labor lobby, open borders advocates, and the Washington, D.C. national security establishment – which allied itself with the failed “Never Trump” movement during the 2016 presidential election.
In a pre-hearing questionnaire obtained by Breitbart News, Nielsen explained how she would be “ready to work with Congress” on a plan to give amnesty to the nearly 800,000 DACA illegal aliens in the U.S.
Likewise, Nielsen chaired a committee at the World Economic Forum that promoted mass immigration to Europe and the U.S., claiming Western nations did not have a choice and needed to accept millions of migrants. That report, as Breitbart News reported, was co-authored by executives from multinational corporations and world banks.
Additionally, Breitbart News reported on Nielsen’s involvement with the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when more than 30,000 illegal aliens and foreign workers were able to come to the U.S. to take American blue-collar jobs which those devastated by the natural disaster had hoped to get.
Following Hurricane Katrina, 1.5 million Americans were displaced by the storm, and easing of labor laws by the Bush administration left many looking for work outside of the Gulf Coast since illegal aliens and foreign workers quickly dominated the paid clean-up effort.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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