President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security was praised Wednesday by a slew of officials from former President George W. Bush’s administration who advocated for amnesty and were members of the failed ‘Never Trump’ movement.

Trump’s nominee Kirstjen Nielsen sat before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, alongside Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) read complimentary letters from former Bush officials Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff.

“She brings operational experience as well having managed the day-to-day operations of the Department,” Ridge wrote of Nielsen in his letter. “Simply put, she is ready to hit the ground running on day one,” Ridge wrote.

Likewise, Chertoff wrote “Kirstjen offers our nation the credentials required of a secretary in today’s environment,” citing her experience in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina under Bush.

Nielsen’s ties to Ridge and Chertoff show a pattern in which the DHS nominee has allied herself with pro-amnesty, open borders establishment-types and former Bush officials.

When Ridge was serving as the head of DHS under Bush in 2003, he demanded that the entire illegal alien population be “legalized” and allowed to remain in the U.S.

At the time, Trump ally and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) slammed Ridge for indirectly pushing amnesty, all while potentially creating a surge at the U.S.-Mexico border. “Mr. Ridge ought to read the laws he is charged with trying to enforce,” Tancredo told the Washington Times. “We have laws on the books that call for him to find and deport these people, and if he is unwilling to do so, he should resign.”

In 2010, Ridge railed against Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s pro-American immigration enforcement — which Trump ally and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach helped craft — saying that instead of deporting illegal aliens, the federal government should have stepped in and legalized the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. “It’s ridiculous to think … we’re going to identify 12 million to 14 million people and send them back,” Ridge told the Associated Press at the time.

In 2016, Ridge even went on a media tour to announce that he refused to support Trump’s “America First” candidacy, writing in US News:

My disregard for Donald Trump has been well documented by multiple media outlets over the last several months, so I won’t belabor it yet again. Suffice to say that I am disappointed that he is our party’s nominee. With a bumper sticker approach to policy, his bombastic tone reflects the traits of a bully, not an American president and statesman. If he cannot unite Republicans, how can he unite America? I simply cannot endorse him.

Chertoff, in 2013, teamed up with the open-borders lobby and the big business community to promote the failed “Gang of Eight” amnesty, which would have put 12 to 30 million illegal aliens on a pathway to U.S. citizen.

“The time is right to do this, for our economy, for our border enforcement system and for our obligation to our fellow human beings,” Chertoff said in 2013 of the amnesty.

In 2006, while serving under Bush, Chertoff continuously touted a failed amnesty plan to give the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. temporary work visas, which would have flooded the American labor market with the millions of cheaper, foreign workers.

Like Ridge, Chertoff — as part of the Washington, D.C. national security establishment — endorsed failed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton against Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who infamously pushed the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan to legalize 12 to 30 million illegal aliens, introduced Nielsen at the confirmation hearing, saying she “understands the extraordinary and wide-range” of issues that DHS is tasked with handling.

Nielsen was prepped for the Senate hearing by former Bush official Thad Bingel who has previously criticized Trump’s border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, saying “Anyone who thinks the wall is a solution in itself is wrong.”

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 must accept millions of unskilled 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.