The Department of Homeland Security is bringing on a pair of mass immigration skeptics to serve as special advisors to its border security agencies.
The hires have drawn concern from immigrant rights activists who say that hard-line immigration think tanks will now be in a position to influence policy like never before.
“These groups have spent 20 years looking for ways that they could hurt immigrants and now they’ve been given the keys to the kingdom,” Lynn Tramonte, the deputy director of immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, told CNN.
Jon Feere, a former legal policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), will advise Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a department spokesman confirmed Tuesday.
Julie Kirchner, the former executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) will hold a similar position under Kevin McAleenan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
Feere and Kirchner’s previous employers are Washington-based research organizations that advocate strict enforcement of immigration laws and reduced levels of both legal and illegal immigration. CIS’s organizational motto is “Low Immigration, Pro Immigrant,” while FAIR hopes for a national immigration policy that reduces annual legal immigration from “well over one million presently, to 300,000 a year over a sustained period,” according to its website. (RELATED: Cash-Strapped California Schools Under Fire For Asking Citizenship Questions)
Kirchner is a familiar name in the Trump administration. After her stint as FAIR’s executive director from 2005 to 2015, she joined the Trump campaign as an immigration policy advisor.
Many of the policy positions advocated by CIS have found their way into into Trump’s executive orders on immigration enforcement although Feere has never officially advised the government. The organization has called for measures adopted by the administration such as withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities and expanding detention and removal of illegal aliens, even those not convicted of violent felonies.
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