Not cruel enough

Kirstjen Nielsen resigned (was fired) from her job of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She had the job for about 16 months and was the public face of the administration’s horrific family separation policy. Twitter user Justin Hendrix explains her firing this way:

Donald Trump could not convince her to be brutal or illegal enough, despite the horrors she executed on his behalf. We need to be prepared for things to get much worse.

Adam Serwer, tweeted a bit from CNN:

The President wanted families separated even if they were apprehended within the US. He thinks the separations work to deter migrants from coming.

Sources told CNN that Nielsen tried to explain they could not bring the policy back because of court challenges, and White House staffers tried to explain it would be an unmitigated PR disaster.

She challenged him. He fired her. So, yeah, she did and supported some hugely cruel things and the nasty guy wanted her to be even more cruel. And break the law while doing it.

Twitter user Alexandra Erin says another reason for the nasty guy’s fury is he wants to get border crossings down to zero. And Nielsen wasn’t brutally repressive enough to make that happen.

Nielsen wasn’t the only one from DHS to leave in the last few months. White House correspondent Geoff Bennett gives us the tally:

!!! DHS leadership vacuum: no confirmed secretary, no dep. secretary, no Secret Service chief, no head of FEMA, no head of ICE, no head of science & technology branch, no head of policy branch, no Inspector General & no CPB commissioner once McAleenan moves over.

CPB should be CBP and is Customs and Border Patrol.

So the governmental department created just after 9/11 to keep us safe is now headless. That makes America a lot less safe. But no leadership means there is no one to challenge unlawful orders.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville discusses this DHS purge. The nasty guy has threatened to close the border if border crossings don’t get to zero. She sums it up this way:

Trump's threat to close the border is not just about keeping people out. When a border is closed, it's also — effectively, even if not intentionally — about keeping people in.

... The discussion about Trump closing parts of the southern border must include the contemporary context that much of our produce comes across that border, as well as the historical context that dictators often starve their own people.

Yes, it could happen here. Especially if we insist on pretending it couldn't.

Trump is unfathomably cruel to migrants and refugees, and he is actively working to fill leadership positions in his administration with people who will abet that cruelty. Why anyone imagines he won't eventually turn that cruelty on the rest of us is beyond me.