Trump Says Only One Person Is in Charge of Immigration: Him

Kirstjen Nielsen and other longtime civil servants stood outside the Department of Homeland Security’s new headquarters Wednesday in the breezy sunshine — a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a building they’d never work in.Nielsen, homeland security secretary for a few more hours, stood smiling next to her replacement. Both held giant gold scissors, and on a count of three, they sliced through the blue ribbon together. If there were bad feelings or awkwardness, they weren’t on display. The event felt more like a graduation than the bloodbath orchestrated by the White House this week to axe the agency’s leadership.

Nielsen, for her part, seemed relaxed as she stepped to the podium to address her employees one last time. She spoke of their accomplishments together and cracked a joke about how construction took so long she almost didn’t see the new headquarters, erected at the site of an old federal psychiatric hospital.

“But I just made it,” she said.

Nielsen resigned Sunday, ending a tumultuous tenure at the helm of a sprawling department of 240,000 people responsible for border security, disaster relief, cyber security, counterterrorism and other missions. She finally had enough after the most recent tangle with President Donald Trump and his aides over the increase of Central American migrants crossing the Southern border, and Trump’s growing frustration.
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