President Trump demanded the construction of a wall along the United States-Mexico border and major cuts to legal immigration levels during a swearing in ceremony for newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Before Vice President Mike Pence swore Nielsen in — a bureaucrat who previously worked in President George W. Bush’s administration — for the DHS position, Trump reassured his supporters that a border wall would be built along the southern border in order to stop illegal immigration and the flow of drugs from various Mexican cartels.
Trump additionally reiterated his desire to seriously reduce legal immigration levels — the U.S. currently admits more than 1.5 million immigrants every year — by ending the process of “chain migration,” whereby new immigrants to the country are allowed to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives with them.
Well, this is an honor. You’ve been with us so long now. Anyway, I have no doubt. And it’s going to be incredible what takes place.
I want to start by thanking Elaine. You’ve done so well and we really appreciate it. And I know you’ll be here for a long while and working together, but this is a very special occasion because this is an issue I ran on — it’s borders, it’s homeland security. And it’s one of the certainly important things. I can’t ever say anything is the most important, because our military is the most important, and lots of other things. But this is right there. This is one of the real big issues.
And I just want to congratulate you on such an important day for our country. The numbers have been so incredible; they’re up to 78 percent. If they used to have a one percent or two percent number, they used to celebrate. We’re at 78 percent. And it went down a little bit because, actually, a lot of people aren’t trying to come in so much because they know it’s not easy.
But you’re going to take it to new levels. We’re going to get the wall. I know you want the wall. We’re going to get the wall. If we don’t get the wall, then I got a lot of very unhappy people, starting with me. (Laughter.) We’re going to get the wall. And we need it. We need it for the drug flow; we need it for people coming into our country. And we want to have great people coming into our country. We want to have a merit-based system. We have to get rid of chain migration — all of these things we’ve been talking about.
And, in addition to the wall, we have to toughen up the borders even more. And we have to toughen up air travel too. It’s not just walls; it’s lots of people fly in and they come in through other means.
But I have absolutely no doubt you’re going to be so outstanding. And I’d like to congratulate you, and I wanted to be here for the big moment.
Though Trump has recommitted to his “America First” immigration agenda, Nielsen’s statements on a number of immigration issues run contrary to the president’s initiatives.
For example, Nielsen conceded to Senate Democrats on more than one occasion that she supports an amnesty for nearly 800,000 illegal aliens who have been shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“I believe that we must, and we owe it to them to find a permanent solution,” she said of passing a DACA amnesty that could potentially lead to a chain migration of 9.9 million to 19 million foreign nationals pouring into the U.S. legally. “It’s no way to expect anyone to live a month or two months at a time,” said Nielsen, even though the DACA work-permits each last for two years.
Nielsen also downplayed Trump’s border wall plan, the most important immigration initiative, during the committee hearing, saying, “There is no need for a wall from sea to shining sea,” Breitbart News reported.
Instead, Nielsen touted “technology” along the southern border as being just as necessary to stop illegal immigration. The technology-based “virtual-wall” narrative is often used by Democrats and the Republican establishment to fake sympathy for the public’s insistence on a border wall.
In a long-form profile piece, Breitbart News revealed how Nielsen is closely aligned with the failed “Never Trump” movement and national security establishment figures – such as Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, and Frances Townsend – all of whom opposed Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
Working as the chair of a World Economic Forum committee, Nielsen 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.
Nielsen’s first action as DHS secretary was the establishment of a DHS Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Office, which will “elevate and streamline DHS efforts to prevent terrorists and other national security threat actors from using harmful agents, such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear material and devices to harm Americans and U.S. interests,” a news release stated.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.