Trump to Hire Former Virginia Official Ken Cuccinelli for DHS

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump plans to hire former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for a job at the Department of Homeland Security, but not as the administration’s immigration “czar,” according to two people familiar with the matter.

The title of Cuccinelli’s job wasn’t immediately clear, though he will work on immigration and other matters at DHS, the people said. Trump has spoken to at least three people about the role of immigration czar, a job intended to coordinate policy on border security and immigration across the administration.

Trump has struggled to achieve his central campaign promise to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and stop illegal migration. Instead, apprehensions of migrants on the southern border have surged this year, leading the president to purge and replace his administration’s top immigration officials.

About 99,000 people were apprehended after crossing the border in April, most of whom were unaccompanied children or in families, according to Customs and Border Protection. Only about 38,000 migrants were apprehended on the southern border in April 2018.

Trump tweeted Tuesday that he’s “very disappointed” that Mexico is doing “virtually nothing” to halt migrants headed north to the U.S.

Trump has blamed the increase on laws and legal rulings that effectively require him to release families and children after they are apprehended to await asylum and deportation proceedings. His administration attempted to separate migrant children from their families last summer, in order to detain the adults and discourage illegal migration, but the policy generated immense public outrage and Trump mostly abandoned in July.

“The laws are so bad,” he complained at a campaign rally Monday in Pennsylvania. “If you don’t release them, they arrest you. They arrest people that are working in law enforcement. It’s a disgrace. Democrat-backed policies have left our borders overrun, our detention facilities overwhelmed. As fast as we build them, they fill up and our hospitals, schools and public resources overburdened.”

Recently, Trump has sought to force migrants to remain on the Mexican side of the border while they await the outcome of their U.S. immigration cases.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net;Justin Sink in WASHINGTON at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu

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