April 7, 2019

Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Is Out

We’ll be talking about what we she did for decades.

Sec. Nielsen

Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA Wire

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Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is officially out of a job as of Sunday afternoon, after a tumultuous 16-month tenure that made her a public face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Nielsen’s resignation came just days after President Donald Trump withdrew the nomination of Ronald Vitiello to lead the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency—a move that Nielsen was reportedly blindsided by.

Trump confirmed the news in a tweet Sunday evening, revealing that the current head of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan, will now serve as acting DHS secretary: 

Nielsen’s tenure will be remembered above all for the family separation policy, an outgrowth of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ policy of “zero tolerance” on prosecuting people who come across the border. When the effects of the policy began to ripple through the press—the New York Times reported in April 2017 that more than 700 kids had been separated from their parents, with more than 100 younger than four—Nielsen at first denied that any such family-separation policy existed:

But subsequent reporting found that family separation was not simply a side-effect, but a deliberate decision—separating small children from parents, the administration hoped, would discourage families from coming across. Not only did Nielsen’s team make it a policy priority to separate children from parents, their actions put those children in horrific conditions, and they failed to keep track of the families they separated, making it difficult to reunite parents and children later on.

“Under the present system, migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property,” a federal judge in San Diego wrote last year, in a decision that put Nielsen’s policy on hold.

On Friday, the administration said it may take up to two years to identify all the families separated under the policy.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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