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Tag: general john kelly
Immigration Takes Center Stage As Senate Confronts Trump Nominees

Immigration Takes Center Stage As Senate Confronts Trump Nominees

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Immigration and domestic security, key themes in Donald Trump’s successful campaign, will likely dominate two U.S. Senate hearings on Tuesday as lawmakers begin several days of questioning the president-elect’s Cabinet nominees.

First to appear before lawmakers will be Trump’s pick for attorney general, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Sessions, a close ally of Trump, helped shape his pro-enforcement, anti-amnesty policy on illegal immigration.

Next will be John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general tapped to head the Department of Homeland Security. In earlier congressional testimony, Kelly characterized inadequate policing of the U.S.-Mexico border as a national security threat.

Both men will face questions from Democrats and Republicans seeking specifics on Trump’s plans following his Jan. 20 inauguration to crack down on illegal immigration – an issue central to his explosion onto the political scene, but on which he has since wavered in some ways.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, force Mexico to pay for it and deport 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

But since he was elected president on Nov. 8, the New York businessman has said part of the wall could be a fence, Congress should fund it with the expectation that Mexico will repay U.S. taxpayers, and that he will focus on deporting immigrants with criminal records and later decide what to do with others.

Both Sessions and Kelly will be major players in immigration policy. In addition to counterterrorism, the Homeland Security secretary oversees immigration enforcement and has discretion over which categories of immigrants are arrested and deported.

AMERICA’S TOP PROSECUTOR

The attorney general is the nation’s top prosecutor and legal adviser to the president. As head of the Justice Department, the attorney general also oversees the immigration court system that decides whether immigrants are deported or granted asylum or some other kind of protection.

“Sessions was a close adviser to Trump. … They’re going to ask, ‘How are you going to use your position to further the president’s agenda?'” said Elizabeth Taylor, a former staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee who advised Republicans during Eric Holder’s nomination to be Democratic President Barack Obama’s first attorney general.

“But,” Taylor added, “historically, attorney general nominees are also asked if they’re willing to stand up to the president.”

In 2015, Republicans held up the nomination of Loretta Lynch, the current attorney general, for 166 days, longer than any nominee in 30 years, over her support for Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

Sessions, 70, and Kelly, 66, are widely expected to be confirmed by the Republican-dominated Senate, but their hearings could be contentious.

Sessions, who has represented the deeply conservative Southern state of Alabama for 20 years, has a long, consistent record of opposing legislation that provides a path to citizenship for immigrants. He has also been a close ally of groups seeking to restrict legal immigration by placing limits on visas used by companies to hire foreign workers.

Roy Beck, president and founder of NumbersUSA, which advocates a reduction in illegal and legal immigration, endorsed Sessions in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley.

“Sessions always has made immigration decisions based on protecting the economic interests of hard-working women and men whose incomes and very jobs have been threatened by the desire of various business lobbies to increase the foreign labor competition in their occupations,” Beck wrote in a Jan. 3 letter.

Civil liberties groups have raised concerns about Sessions’ record on immigration and other positions, including government surveillance, civil rights and marijuana legalization.

He was denied confirmation to a federal judgeship in 1986 after allegations emerged that he made racist remarks, including testimony that he called an African-American prosecutor “boy,” an allegation Sessions denied.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s legal director will testify at Sessions’ confirmation hearing and “raise significant, serious questions about his hostility to civil rights and civil liberties,” the organization said in a statement. The group said it is making an exception to its longstanding policy of not interfering with federal nominations in this case.

On Monday, a group of civil liberties and internet freedom groups sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee describing Sessions as a “leading proponent of expanding the government’s surveillance authority of ordinary Americans.”

Sessions has long condemned marijuana use, which has been legalized for recreational use in eight U.S. states and the District of Columbia but remains banned by federal law. As attorney general, Sessions would have the power to intervene in states that are not in compliance with federal law. He has also opposed attempts to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; additional reporting by Dustin Volz and Ian Simpson; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Jonathan Oatis)

IMAGE: Donald Trump sits with U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, U.S., October 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

Trump Seeks Another Retired General For Top Administration Job

Trump Seeks Another Retired General For Top Administration Job

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate a third retired general for a top job in his new administration with the choice of a battle-hardened Marine commander to lead the agency set up after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to protect the U.S. homeland.

Trump is expected to name former Marine General John Kelly, 66, as head of the Department of Homeland Security, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday.

In confirmed by the Senate, Kelly will be in charge of the agency tasked with securing borders against illegal immigration, protecting the president, responding to natural disasters, coordinating intelligence and countering terror threats.

Like Trump, Kelly is believed to hold strong views on stopping illegal immigration. The four-star general told a congressional committee last year that the lack of security on the U.S.-Mexican border represents a national security threat.

The former head of the military’s Southern Command, Kelly was responsible for U.S. military activities and relationships in Latin America and the Caribbean. He was a proponent of keeping open the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kelly, whose son was killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, retired in January after a 45-year military career. CBS first reported that Trump would nominate Kelly to the position, which would put him in charge of more than 240,000 employees. Those include Secret Service and Border Patrol agents as well as the agency that clears refugees for resettlement in the United States.

Trump energized voters in the election campaign by promising to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border in order to keep out Mexican immigrants he described as rapists and murderers.

In 2015 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kelly said people-smuggling activities on the southern border were a dire threat.

“Terrorist organizations could seek to leverage those same smuggling routes to move operatives with intent to cause grave harm to our citizens or even bring weapons of mass destruction into the United States,” Kelly said.

Such sentiments may have endeared him to Trump, who warned repeatedly during his presidential campaign of dangers from illegal immigration, and pledged to build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it.

The Republican president-elect, who has no military experience, also plans to nominate retired General James Mattis to lead the Pentagon and picked retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn to be his national security adviser.

MILITARY EXPERIENCE

Kelly served in Iraq several times, and in 2003 was the first Marine in more than 50 years to be promoted to the rank of brigadier general while in a combat zone.

In November 2010, his son, Marine 1st Lieutenant Robert M. Kelly, was killed in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, at the younger Kelly’s burial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, his father said he preferred not eulogize his son.

Rather, Kelly said, he wanted to honor all those who enlisted after the Sept. 11 attacks, ready to fight “an enemy that is as savage as any that ever walked the earth.”

Although Kelly’s military experience may give him insight into overseas threats like drug trafficking or Islamist militancy, he would face new challenges at an agency that oversees everything from airport security to protecting against cyber threats and responding to domestic security crises.

Kelly also questioned the Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat, and differed publicly with President Barack Obama over the Democrat’s attempt to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

“There are no innocent men down there,” Kelly said of Guantanamo in a January interview with the Military Times newspaper.

The Republican-controlled Senate must confirm Kelly for the Homeland Security post. He would be the fifth secretary of the United States’ newest cabinet-level agency and the first to serve without a background in law.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Warren Strobel; Writing by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Alistair Bell)

IMAGE: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump appears with retired Marine Corps General John Kelly outside the main clubhouse after their meeting at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 20, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo