Mayorkas abruptly fires all 32 members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council
Its current membership include number Trump-era officials whose services are no longer required
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas fired most members of the department’s independent advisory council on Friday, a purge that included several allies of former president Donald Trump and veteran officials who served under both parties.
Among those unexpectedly terminated from the council were Trump-era officials such as former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf, former Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan -- but include those appointed by DHS Secretaries or both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Former Department of Homeland Security officials and advisory board members who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they could not remember so many members being dismissed at once, as the general practice of past administrations was to allow appointees to serve out their terms before replacing them.
The council is unpaid and includes leaders from state and local government, law enforcement, the private sector and academia who advise the agency on issues such as immigration, terrorism, crime and national disasters. Members serve one- to three-year terms and meet about four times a year.
The agency said that Mayorkas will conduct a "comprehensive review" to work out how the council can be used to advise the department -- and will launch a redesigned HSAC with "diverse membership" representative of the country. It also emphasized that it would be bipartisan.
Wolf criticized the move in a Tweet Friday:
The removal of more than 30 board members comes as the Biden administration tries to rid the department of Trump-era policies and practices, especially on immigration, and as it has struggled to shelter and care for an unprecedented number of migrant children and teenagers who have arrived at the Southwest border without their parents.
DHS officials said Mayorkas would conduct an assessment of the council and reconstitute it with bipartisan members who better reflect the diversity of the United States and the people DHS serves. Mayorkas said he plans to retain Chairman William Bratton, the former police commissioner in New York and police chief in Los Angeles, and Vice Chair Karen P. Tandy, a retired administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. William H. Webster, former director of the FBI and the CIA, will remain the council’s chair emeritus.
The move bears a striking resemblence to the purges Democrats were advocating in November and December. As ACV is currrently reporting, those purges have not been put on hold, but planning is progressing. This mass Friday night massacre may will be the first opening salvo in the effort to punish Trump supporters, former Trump administation members and others associated with the 45th president.
The purge could not come at a worse time, being executed by Mayorkas as DHS has been in the spotlight due to the dramatically escalating crisis at the Southern border, The massive influx of illegals and unaccompanied children has left the administration scrambling to cope with hundreds of thousands of migrants. Critics have blamed the surge on the reversal of Trump-era border protections like the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP.)
DHS and Health and Human Services (HHS)Â both recently put out calls for federal employees to volunteer with the surge -- but the administration has refused to call the situation a "crisis," instead calling it a "challenge."