Chapter 5, Part 3: The Department of Homeland Security
I’m back.
Day 25 of reading and sharing my notes on Project 2025 (the long title is Mandate for Leadership 2024: The Conservative Promise, in case you're searching for it).
Here's my approach and why I’m doing this.
MY OPINION
I don’t usually put my opinion at the top because I just write as I read. But I’m circling back today. I just finished reading Everything Sad is Untrue (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri. It’s a memoir, and Nayeri is telling his story as if he were a 12-year-old Scheherazde, talking to his classmates in Oklahoma, where he was relocated as a refugee. Nayeri’s mother fled Iran with her children after the government put a fatwa on her head because she converted to Christianity and was active with the underground church.
I can’t recommend it enough. It’s not specifically a Christian book, though he does talk about his mother’s faith and about God generally.
Besides being one of the best-written books I’ve ever read, I mention it here because he describes the experience of being a refugee. It’s unflinching and deeply moving.
Policies, even those created with the best intentions, affect real people. I wonder what would have happened to Daniel Nayeri if Project 2025 had been implemented when he was young. Would we have his story? Maybe. But maybe not.
And despite my oversimplifications at times in the “My Opinion” sections, I get that immigration is complicated. Nayeri eventually gained asylum here, but so did his (spoiler) abusive stepfather.
But I will always lean toward mercy in letting people in. That doesn’t mean we don’t prosecute criminal acts/deport people if they occur.
SUMMARY
Chapter 5 continues. It’s written by Ken Cuccinelli. His bio is in Part 1 of this chapter.
This subsection is “New Policies” in the section on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Cuccinelli says ICE should be “full participants in the Intelligence Community.”
He also says ICE should use “Blackies Warrants,” which describes as “civil search warrants” used for worksite enforcement.
**-“Safeguarding Americans will require not just securing the border, but continuous vetting and investigations of many aliens who exploited President Biden’s open border for potentially nefarious purposes, including some Afghan evacuees sent directly to the U.S. during America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
mY OPINION
They are talking about investigating people who are in the United States legally. Also, who planned that disastrous withdrawal?
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli says Congress should fund 100,000 beds daily for ICE, as well as 20,000 Enforcement & Removal Operations officers and 5,000 Office of the Principal Legal Advisor attorneys.
The next agency Cuccinelli addresses is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
He says the agency has been focused “easing asylum eligibility” and that “guarantees” asylum fraud. He says USCIS has also tried to remove “legal barriers to immigration.”
He says the way the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate is structured has created inconsistencies and a lack of coordination in “national policy.” He says they should focus on vetting and fraud detection.
He says there should be “reimplementation of the USCIS denaturalization unit” which IDs and prosecutes “criminal and civil denaturalization cases … for aliens who obtained citizenship through fraud or other illicit means.”
MY OPINION
I’m guessing that went away for a reason. And I suspect the number of people who gained citizenship through fraud is quite low. Talk of denaturalization generally is concerning to me.
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli says USCIS “should create a criminal enforcement component within the agency to investigate immigration benefits fraud … Particular attention should be given to addressing increasing incidents of forced labor trafficking in work visa programs.”
MY OPINION
I, too, think traffickers should be prosecuted. I doubt we need a new section of USCIS to deal with that, but if that’s the best place to handle it, great. If you search “immigration benefits fraud,” you will find that the government is already working on this. Sounds like a waste of resources.
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli says the Biden administration has allowed extensions of “employment authorization to large groups of people who are in the country without legal status.”
MY OPINION
Does he not see the contradiction here? If they have employment authorization, they have legal status.
SUMMARY
He wants to review all of Biden’s policies, memos, and “management directives” and get rid of them “within the first few days of the incoming Administration.”
His suggestions for “New Policies” for USCIS:
Retrain for fraud detection instead of speed in processing
Return training to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers to “underscore the enforcement role of USCIS as a vetting agency”
Make policies so that employees are not allowed to “focus on unlawful programs (DACA, mass parole for Afghans, Ukrainians, Venezuelans, etc.), which divert resources away from nuclear family and employment programs.”
MY OPINION
The hatred of DACA is disgusting. These people have spent their whole lives here and currently have no path to citizenship or even legal status, which is all they want. They work hard and pay taxes but have no representation. Who does that sound like?
SUMMARY
He describes more about priorities and reversing “COVID flexibilities.”
**-”The incoming Administration should spearhead an immigration legislative agenda focused on creating a merit-based immigration system that rewards high-skilled aliens instead of the current system that favors extended family-based and luck-of-the-draw immigration. To that end, the diversity lottery should be repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family, and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to award visas only to the ‘best and brightest.’”
MY OPINION
So much for the high-minded talk in the introduction about the importance of family.
And if they think the U.S. economy can exist with only immigrants who are “high-skilled,” they’re in for a shock. Again, I am not okay with the way the United States exploits immigrants, but not allowing people to come here and work is not the answer. And it’s deeply offensive to characterize hard-working people as not the “best and brightest” simply because of their job skills.
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli says H-1B visas “should be transformed into an elite program through which employers are vying to bring in only the top foreign workers at the highest wages so as not to depress American opportunities.”
MY OPINION
What?
It’s not okay to have immigrants take low-paying jobs because that “depresses American opportunities,” but it’s fine for them to take “the highest wages” because apparently we regular folk can’t get those jobs anyway. The hypocrisy is bizarre.
I’ve said this before, but I’m fine with immigration. We need a sensible system that doesn’t let known criminals in and that prosecutes or deports people who commit crimes here. But if people want to come and contribute to making this country a better place, let them. My ancestors came before there was such a thing as an illegal way to get into the U.S. Immigration is good for this country.
And the only people who have a right to say we shouldn’t let people in are Native Americans.
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli argues for tightening up work visa programs, ending Temporary Protected Status, requiring E-Verify, and ending parole abuse.
The next subsection, still for USCIS, is “Budget.”
He says the agency is funded by fees paid by people seeking immigration benefits, work permits, and naturalization, and it should stay that way. He says all fees should be increased, and a fee for asylum applicants should be instituted.
MY OPINION
Why do they hate refugees so much?
SUMMARY
He wants to add “premium processing,” where people can pay more and move to the front of the line.
He also wants to kick everyone out whose application has been rejected or is being adjudicated until it’s caught up with its paperwork. And he thinks USCIS should “pause the intake of applications in a benefit category when backlogs in that category become excessive.
MY OPINION
The premium processing is another way for refugees and poor people to never get their paperwork processed, particularly since he admits there’s backlog. Why not hire enough people to get the job done?
SUMMARY
The next subsection is “Personnel.”
He says USCIS should be considered a national security agency, and leaks should be treated as such. And he says the union should be decertified. People who don’t like it should be fired.
He says personnel “should live and work in the communities that are most affected by their daily duties and decisions,” and the D.C. office should be small.
Moving on to “Necessary Border and Immigration Statutory, Regulatory, and Administrative Changes.”
He has several legislative proposals:
Create an authority “to expel illegal aliens across the border immediately when certain non-health conditions are met, such as loss of operational control of the border.”
Money for “border wall system infrastructure.”
Money for Port of Entry infrastructure
Four proposals regarding unaccompanied minors: 1) Get rid of immigration benefits for “unaccompanied alien children” because it encourages parents to send their children across the border and they become victims of trafficking; 2) create a system where all unaccompanied children can be returned to their home countries (that is only allowed for Canada and Mexico currently); 3) create nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied detention and housing, including “large scale-use of temporary facilities (for example, tents); 4) move detention of “alien of children” from Department of Health & Human Services to the Department of Homeland Security
Three proposals regarding asylum reform: 1) Make it harder to claim fear of persecution; 2) “codify former asylum bars and third-country transit rules”; 3) eliminate protected social groups and codify “that gang violence and domestic violence are not grounds for asylum”
End “abuse of parole in contravention of statute”
Take funds from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and give them to the Department of Homeland Security for border policing, etc.
Ensure “Expedited Removal is used to the fullest extent” and 1) update Remain in Mexico “to withstand judicial scrutiny and executive inaction”; 2) enforce Asylum Cooperative Agreements; 3) permit programs like the Prompt Asylum Claim Review and Humanitarian Asylum Review Process
Two proposals related to employment authorization: 1) “Congress should reassert control of employment authorization … and limit it to certain categories of legal immigrants and non-immigrants”; 2) permanently authorize E-Verify and make it mandatory
Two proposals related to state and local law enforcement: 1) authorize state and local law enforcement to participate in immigration and border security actions; 2) require compliance with “immigration detainers” and take away funds for “jurisdictions that implement either official or unofficial sanctuary policies”
Restrict prosecutors’ ability to decide whether to prosecute cases
Require immigrants to be detained instead of allowing it
MY OPINION
That’s a lot. I’ve covered most of it already. The state of unaccompanied minors is tragic. I don’t know the right thing to do for them. I don’t think it’s always sending them home, but it probably often is. Perhaps we could look at effective aid for places they are coming from.
Why wouldn’t gang violence or domestic violence be grounds for asylum? Because we have so much of it here and we don’t our citizens becoming refugees elsewhere?
The reason NGOs work at the border is because our government is woefully inefficient in helping them. Taking funds away from them isn’t the way to solve the problem.
Also, so much for states’ rights.
And the last one shows why they want to create tent cities. The prospect is truly awful.
SUMMARY
The section on regulations is largely repetitive. This one is worth noting:
**- Cuccinelli says the president should use executive orders so that “whenever the Secretary of Homeland Security determines that an actual or anticipated (italics mine) mass migrations of aliens … the Secretary may make … rules and regulations prohibiting in whole or in part the introduction of persons from such countries … including through the expulsion of such aliens. Such rule and regulation making shall not be subject to the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act.”
“… the Secretary shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements of Title 8 that the Secretary, in his or her sole discretion, determines are necessary to avert or curtail the mass migration.”
That’s it for today. The next section is on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).