By Maggie Haberman and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
President Trump is expected to name Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a former attorney general of Virginia and an immigration hard-liner, as his choice to coordinate the administration’s immigration policies, a White House official confirmed on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump has been considering creating an immigration “czar” for months. But the specifics of Mr. Cuccinelli’s role — including his title and the scope of his duties — are still being hashed out, according to the official. And while the position was originally conceived of as a White House job, Mr. Cuccinelli is expected to be based in the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Cuccinelli met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Monday, along with nearly a dozen other administration officials, including Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security. By Monday evening, Mr. Cuccinelli had begun placing calls to people to alert them that he expects to get the job, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The move caught a number of senior officials in the White House and at the Department of Homeland Security by surprise. Many of them had no idea that the decision was made to bring Mr. Cucinelli into the administration. The formal announcement could come as soon as this week, officials said.
He is the second person to be given a prominent role in the Trump administration this month after publicly backing aggressive immigration policies on cable news, which Mr. Trump consumes with gusto. Mr. Trump named Mark Morgan, who was forced out as Border Patrol chief two days after Mr. Trump took office, to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Cuccinelli served as attorney general in Virginia from 2010 to 2014, running unsuccessfully for governor there in 2013. A prominent conservative, he supported Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for president in 2016, leading an effort to win over delegates to the party’s convention, including those supporting Mr. Trump. That kind of history has kept other officials from jobs they had hoped to get in the Trump administration.
Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the domestic policy council in the Obama administration, said the appointment of Mr. Cuccinelli was concerning given his support in the past for denying citizenship to American-born children of undocumented immigrants and for a proposal to allow employers to fire workers who do not speak English on the job.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Ms. Muñoz said. “The president is trying to send an ever tougher message, but ultimately these things are symbols just in the same way the wall is a symbol. Even if you are desperate to show how tough you are, you’re not likely to produce a policy that addresses the problems at the border or the interior.”
Mr. Cuccinelli and Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, were both under consideration for the immigration role. But Mr. Cuccinelli was always seen within the White House as the favorite, and Mr. Kobach did not help his case with Mr. Trump and some of his advisers with a list of the 10 “requirements” he had for taking the job, including access to a government jet 24 hours a day, weekends off with his family in Kansas and a promise to be nominated for Mr. McAleenan’s job by November if he wanted it.
Besides uncertainties about his job description, Mr. Cuccinelli will also face a challenge navigating relationships within the administration at a time when Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser, are jockeying for influence on immigration policy. Mr. Miller, whose views are more aligned with Mr. Cuccinelli’s than Mr. Kushner’s, is said to be supportive of the choice. Mr. Kushner has not been particularly engaged with the appointment, according to administration officials.
White House officials, including Mr. Miller, have clashed with homeland security over the slow fulfilling of policies that are legally questionable or impractical, such as an idea to bus migrants to so-called sanctuary cities or a targeted operation to arrest and deport thousands of undocumented families who had missed their court date, according to current and former department officials.
Peter Vincent, the top lawyer at ICE during the Obama administration, said Mr. Cuccinelli’s legal experience could help the administration manage the competing views of White House aides.
The White House “has finally belatedly brought in an individual in Mr. Cuccinelli who can herd these cats and effectuate the president’s vision and policy goals as it relates to border security and immigration,” Mr. Vincent said.
It is also unclear how Mr. Cuccinelli will work with Mr. McAleenan, who was named acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security after the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen. Mr. McAleenan is known as a stern career law enforcement official who has respect from both Democrats and Republicans. He previously served as the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
While Mr. McAleenan carried out Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which led to family separations, he has also backed aid to Central American countries and has acknowledged many migrants are fleeing gang violence and poverty. Rather than describing migrants as criminals on his television appearances, he has frequently emphasized his fear that more migrant children will die in federal custody. Three migrant children have died in the custody of Customs and Border Protection since December.
A spokesman for Mr. McAleenan did not respond on Tuesday to questions regarding the hiring of Mr. Cuccinelli.
“What does that person take off the plate of the acting homeland security secretary?” said David Lapan, who was the department’s press secretary early in the Trump administration. “If the metric of success is lowering the number of migrants at the southwest border, how can this position have any effect on that? It all goes back to, ‘What’s his role?’”
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