Another key player in the Trump administation may have come close to resigning her post this week, after the president lashed out at her in a Wednesday meeting.
According to a report from The New York Times, President Donald Trump "berated" Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Kirstjen Nielsen this week for failing to adequately secure the country's borders against undocumented immigrants.
Trump's entire cabinet reportedly bore witness to the scolding, which the Times said was just a portion of a long rant about how the administration on the whole was falling short of its stated goal to tighten border security and curb illegal immigration. Nielsen took the wide-reaching criticism of the administration's failures in this area personally, reportedly telling associates that if Trump was unhappy with her performance, she would leave. She had even gone so far as to draft a resignation letter, according to the Times.
A spokesperson from Nielsen's office denied the existence of such a letter to the Times, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the outlet that "the president is committed to fixing our broken immigration system and our porous borders" when asked to comment on the content of the Wednesday meeting.
In response to Newsweek's request for comment, DHS press secretary Tyler Q. Houlton cited a Thursday afternoon tweet from his office, calling the Times story false. "The Secretary is hard at work today on the President's security-focused agenda and supporting the men and women of @DHSgov," Houlton wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment.
The @nytimes article alleging that the Secretary drafted a resignation letter yesterday and was close to resigning is false. The Secretary is hard at work today on the President's security-focused agenda and supporting the men and women of @DHSgov.
— Chase Jennings (@SpoxDHS) May 10, 2018
Trump has let his frustration surrounding immigration issues be known to the public, especially recently, as a caravan of about 150 migrants from Central America made its way to the southern border. Trump went on a Twitter tear, writing that he'd told Nielsen to block the migrants from entering the U.S.
"I have instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country," Trump wrote last month. "It is a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so naive! WALL."
What Trump didn't note when conveying those orders, however, was that the U.S. has a domestic and international legal obligation to process any immigrant who comes to its borders seeking asylum. In her written testimony for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Nielsen highlighted the need for asylum reform and suggested that DHS "impose and enforce penalies for fraud" in credible fear interviews, the first step in the long, bureaucratic process of seeking asylum.
Nielsen suggested that such changes hadn't moved along as quickly as she'd have liked.
Trump, she told the Times, is "rightly frustrated that existing loopholes and the lack of congressional action have prevented this administration from fully securing the border."
