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Cuccinelli is expected to coordinate the implementation of Trump’s border security policies, including the construction of the border wall and a reform of the catch-and-release laws and regulations.
Trump picked Cuccinelli over Kris Kobach, an immigration reformer who served as secretary of state in Kansas and has a keen understanding of migration laws.
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Unless his new duties and powers are issued in writing by Trump, Cuccinelli will have to fight for influence in Trump’s free-wheeling White House and also to ensure action by agency officials, such as the current temporary head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan.
These other leaders — including the secretaries of state and labor — have legal control over critical immigration decisions, spending, and actions, and also have their own influence in Congress.
These cabinet secretaries also have the power to appoint and supervise a vast range of vital mid-level officials. In turn, those mid-level officials have the power to block, sideline or wreck a wide variety of policies, such as the construction of the border wall, implementation of anti-migration reforms, and reforms of the visa-worker programs promised by Trump during the 2016 election.
The report said Cuccinelli would be based at McAleenan’s DHS, not at the White House. The DHS location may curb his ability to implement Trump’s policies at agencies outside DHS.
Cuccinelli has a long record opposing illegal migration, but little record or experience with other aspects of the nation’s migration problem, such as the catch-and-release laws, and the government’s role in using legal migration to expand the nation’s new labor supply with cheap legal and illegal workers.
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Due to a surge in migrants filling California detention facilities to capacity, US Border Patrol agents in El Centro began dumping detained border crossers three hours north at the San Bernardino Greyhound Station last Wednesday, after the agency ran out of room to house them.
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Of note, El Centro is in Imperial County - right next to San Diego County, where the Trump administration began flying hundreds of detained immigrants from overcrowded facilities in Texas. Plans to send migrants to Florida and other states however were scrapped, with President Trump tweeting last week "There are no plans to send migrants to northern or Coastal Border facilities, including Florida." In the case of San Diego, however, CBP officials confirmed that the migrant relocations had begun.