A Handful Of Congressional Republicans Are Wondering If The Nazification Of U.S. Immigration Policy Will Hurt Them At The Polls Again

Monday evening there were a slew of reports that Capitol Hill Republicans were freaking out over the Trump-ordered mayhem at the Department of Homeland Security. And, believe me, virtually no one in Congress other than Steve King (R-IA) was excited to hear that the White House's pet neo-Nazi, Steve Miller, had been unleashed with full authority to reimplement his reviled "zero tolerance" agenda. What comes after babies in cages? Babies in gas chambers? Republican senators are grumbling that Miller was never nominated, investigated or confirmed for anything and that he's running the whole show. Trump breaking the law himself by explicitly instructing border agents to just ignore the law and defy the courts, isn't helping either. "If judges give you trouble, say, 'Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.'"

The Washington Post's Seung Min Kim reported that Grassley was raging against Trump, especially when he heard that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Francis Cissna was on Miller's purge list. By Tuesday morning the NY Times was blaring that "Trump’s purge of the nation’s top homeland security officials is a sign that he is preparing to unleash an even fiercer assault on immigration, including a possible return of his controversial decision last summer to separate migrant children from their parents... But the longer term effect of the eruption of Oval Office frustration is likely to be a burst of hard-line policies that stand out even in an administration that has pursued an unprecedented series of executive actions and rules changes aimed at reducing legal and illegal immigration into the United States."

Jonathan Swan at Axios had the details for Republicans already on slow burn, reporting that "Trump has directed top officials to execute the most aggressive changes in immigration policy since his inauguration… Some officials consider the moves legally and politically dubious." Executive orders are aimed at making it "more difficult for people to invoke their fear of returning to their home country in order to seek asylum in the U.S.," largely by pretending the Orwellian fascist dictatorships in the U.S. protectorates in Central America are lovely places for people to live. Trump and Miller want to "change rules to allow the government to detain migrant children for longer than the 20-day limit allowed under the so-called Flores agreement... Sources close to Nielsen tell us that Trump and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller have called for changes that are legally dubious and would therefore be operationally ineffective."

• Nielsen has found Trump's demands unreasonable, and he has privately described her as "weak on the border," even though she oversaw actions that many viewed as the most brutal in recent memory-- such as the "zero tolerance" policy that separated migrant parents from their children.
• These sources say that Trump’s desire to make it dramatically harder for people to seek asylum in the U.S. wouldn’t produce lasting changes because they would immediately lead to court challenges. 

Is this going to have any impact at the polls? In other words, will the evangelical base still loyal to Trump continue to be fine with what his regime is doing refugee and immigrant families? Team Politico reports that even some of Trump's congressional allies are starting to worry. Senators are "urging him not to fire more top officials and warning him how hard it will be to solve twin crises at the border and the federal agencies overseeing immigration policy." And they're worried that Miller has taken over. John Bresnahan wrote that after November elections in which suburban voters rejected Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda, the president is once again making it the centerpiece of the GOP’s platform.

Texas Senator Cornyn, McTurtle's top deputy told Politico he has "no idea what Miller’s agenda is in determining immigration policy because he isn’t Senate-confirmed and doesn’t correspond with the Hill."

Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the most senior GOP senator, is trying to head off even more dismissals as Trump tries to reshape DHS into a “tougher” mold.

In an interview, Grassley expressed concern that Trump may soon boot U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Francis Cissna and Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, who heads the office of policy and strategy at USCIS.

“I heard that they are on the list to be fired,” Grassley said. “They are doing in an intellectual-like way what the president wants to accomplish. So no, they should not go.”

Republicans empathize with Trump’s frustrations over the border and Congress’ languid pace at changing immigration laws. They mostly backed him on his 35-day government shutdown over the border wall, buckling only as the standoff dragged into its second month.

Most of them hated his emergency declaration on the southern border, but only 25 GOP lawmakers between the two chambers ended up bucking him. And when Trump and Miller sought to tank an immigration compromise last year, Senate Republicans overwhelmingly sided with the president and left Democrats holding the bag on the legislative collapse.

But on immigration, the party is not in lockstep with Trump. So even as the president pursues more aggressive strategies on the border, the GOP might not stick with him ahead of an election cycle that has the Senate up for grabs and with Republicans eager to take back the House.

“He thinks it’s a winning issue,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican whip. “It works for him. It may not work for everybody else.”

...Centrist GOP Rep. Will Hurd, who narrowly won reelection in 2018, said the turnover in the upper ranks of DHS isn’t helpful during a critical time at the southern border, though the Texan expressed confidence in Nielsen’s successor.

“When you’re dealing with something that’s the worst we’ve seen in 12, 13 years, having to deal with that problem and having new people come in and deal with it is always tricky,” said Hurd, whose district stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Moderate GOP Rep. Tom Reed of New York said he would prefer to focus on issues like infrastructure, drug pricing and health care in the 2020 election cycle, saying the issue of immigration is being kept alive “for political purposes.”

Reed also took a veiled shot at Miller: “One hard-liner is not going to dictate the outcome of this.”

But Miller’s rise in the Trump administration is merely one more indication of how the president gravitates toward the restrictionist wing of his party.

“The president is really unhappy with the results and he’s trying to find a different formula that produces a different result,” said Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 4 Senate GOP leader. “Unless you either change the court directives or the asylum law, it’s very hard to quickly come up with a solution. And the president’s frustrated by that.”

The problem for Trump is that that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Congress’ dithering on immigration in the six years since the Senate passed its “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration bill, which died in the House, is no surprise.

Republicans have been signaling to Trump that with the election coming up so soon, they're not going to be able to confirm any more hard core neo-Nazis he sends over the the Hill. Xenophobic extremist Kris Kobach has been widely rumored to be the top choice of fellow-fascist Stephen Miller to replace Nielsen or one of her fired-- or soon-to-be fired-- lieutenants. Yesterday, the Kansas City Star reported that Kansas' retiring senior senator, Pat Roberts, warned, dramatically, "Don’t go there. We can’t confirm him."