John Kelly Leaves DHS As A Man Loathed By Immigration Advocates, But Now He Has Trump’s Ear

While there may be no love lost between immigration advocates and Kelly, John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE, said the retired Army general was well liked at DHS and that many people were disappointed to see him go.

Many didn’t see him adopting a heavy immigration enforcement agenda when he started the job because he didn’t have that background, Sandweg told BuzzFeed News.

However, Sandweg added, “I don’t think it panned out, from what I’ve seen and heard he was very supportive of an enforcement agenda.”

But Kamal Essaheb, immigration policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, said Kelly always gave mixed messages about where he stood on immigration. He expressed sympathy for young immigrants who benefitted from the embattled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shielded them from deportation, but deferred to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the program’s future.

“In six months it seems like he really has run an agency that’s engaged in really aggressive enforcement that I hadn’t seen as long as I’ve been doing this work,” Essaheb told BuzzFeed News.

Kelly would often hide behind the idea that he was just following the law when giving direction on arresting and deporting immigrants, Essaheb said. But that was a departure from his predecessors, who exercised discretion to avoid “scattershot enforcement” with limited resources.

“[DHS] is accomplishing the spirit of what the president is asking,” Essaheb said. “He wants a deportation army, he wants to scare immigrants who are living here and to some extent Secretary Kelly has accomplished that.”