Two items. First, Shannon Pettypiece @ NBC News:
Senior White House Correspondent
NBC News Digital
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump imposes sweeping entry restrictions in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus — and considers still more — he’s relying on an agency to help implement them that has been hollowed out at the top ranks in a revolving door of leadership, potentially hampering his administration’s response to the crisis.
It has been nearly a year since the Department of Homeland Security has had a Senate-confirmed leader. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, the fourth person to lead the agency in three years, has been on the job less than six months.
In addition, 65 percent of top jobs in the department are vacant or filled by acting appointees, more than in any other federal agency, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that advocates for more effective government. Among the vacancies are the No. 2 official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the department’s top lawyer and the head of the country’s immigration system.
That has led to a cascade of other unfilled jobs, a vacuum of leadership causing major decisions to be deferred and a drop in morale at the agency that was born out of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to coordinate the government’s response to threats, said people close to DHS. After a chaotic rollout over the weekend of restrictions on many travelers from Europe — where those returning to the U.S. were held for hours in cramped conditions — there are new concerns that the agency isn’t prepared to manage what’s to come.
“You have the vacancies, the musical chairs with positions throughout the organization and policies that come down without a lot of forethought putting added stress on a workforce that already has an extremely crucial job to protect the homeland,” said David Lapan, who was a spokesman for DHS during Trump’s first year in office. “So at what point do we break them?”
To Lapan, the chaotic scenes at airports over the weekend were a reminder of what happened when, in the early days of his presidency, Trump abruptly announced travel restrictions on passengers coming from predominately Muslim countries without giving DHS time to prepare.
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Now, lets hear from the always amazing Betsy Woodruff Swan over at her “new home” Politico on how DHS has, predictably, tried to “hide the ball” on the coronavirus exposure of its own employees:
FederalLaw Enforcement Reporter
Politico
Nearly 500 Homeland Security employees are quarantined because of the novel coronavirus, and at least 13 are confirmed or presumed COVID-19 positive, according to documentation reviewed by POLITICO.
A DHS spokesperson would not to comment on the record for this story.
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The department previously revealed that eight Transportation Security Administration officers had contracted COVID-19.
But the latest numbers are higher and highlight the challenge the novel coronavirus poses to the federal workforce. More than 240,000 people work for DHS, making it the third-largest workforce in the federal government. Many of those employees interact with numerous people every day as part of their work, including employees with Customs and Border Protection and the TSA.
“The department’s leadership is going to have to pay very close attention as this public health crisis evolves,” said John Cohen, former acting undersecretary of intelligence and analysis. “It has to be concerned that its ability to carry out its core mission could be compromised if there’s a widespread outbreak of the virus among DHS personnel. And quite frankly, that’s something that federal, state, and local officials need to be concerned about across the board — that this virus will spread among first responders, law enforcement, and Homeland Security personnel, compromising the ability of those organizations to protect the public.”
. . . .
“Because of the president’s outsized focus on the immigration enforcement part of the DHS mission set — since immigration is not the only thing in DHS’ mission — the organization has been under a lot of strain over the last three years,” he said. “The focus on immigration, lots of attention, lots of presidential pressure, vacancies, changes in leadership, the government shutdown, people having to work without pay — after all of that, add on this pandemic and I think you have cause for concern about a workforce that has been under extended stress now having to endure yet more.”
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Go to the links above for the complete articles.
The vast, vast majority of so-called “civil immigration enforcement” has little to do with legitimate national security. In fact, the regime’s obsession with inflicting unnecessary cruelty and dehumanization on desperate migrants, most of whom, at worst, are merely seeking to save or improve their lives, has actually hampered the Government’s prosecutions of serious crimes, clogged courts and jails with minor immigration offenders, and reduced removals of those with serious criminal records. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/the-trump-administrations-immigration-jails-are-packed-but-deportations-are-lower-than-in-obama-era/2019/11/17/27ad0e44-f057-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html In other words, misguided priorities, wasted resources, and unnecessary pain.
So, it’s hardly surprising that faced with a genuine crisis that threatens health and safety, the DHS is rudderless, ill-prepared to respond, and continues to hide the real human consequences of its malicious incompetence, thereby endangering both its own line employees as well as the entire U.S. public.
Betsy Woodruff Swan is one of my favorite guest panelists on “Meet the Press.” Clear, concise, articulate, analytical! I assisted Betsy occasionally in the past when she was at The Daily Beast. I hope that in her new role she will get “re-involved” in immigration coverage. In any event, great to “post” you again, Betsy!
PWS
03-19-20