Op-Ed: A dismissal at Customs and Border Protection shows how hard law enforcement reform can be
(Photo: The Washington Times)
It happens all the time in the U.S. of A.
In April, as President Trump became increasingly frustrated with a lack of progress on immigration policy, he asked Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly to start the process of dismissing Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost.
The story of Provost’s firing got national headlines. It was a stunning example of the sometimes-harsh, sometimes-pathetic nature of one of President Trump’s favorite tactics – the use of the government as an occupying force.
As with the firing of former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, Trump was apparently using the White House, which he has so far kept largely out of the immigration fray, to go after one of his chief targets — a key member of Customs and Border Protection. It did not appear to be illegal, it simply was.
As Kelly explained during his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Provost was removed not from the rank of an agent but, rather, as the head of the agency’s Office of Field Operations. Her responsibility was to develop field operations within the field, much of it involving international border security.
But there was another reason, too. Provost, an illegal alien herself, had been caught going through all the steps necessary to provide a fake or fraudulent citizenship document for a 17-year-old-boy.
In his interview, Kelly pointed out that border agents were being deployed to the United States’ northern border in large numbers to deter illegal immigration, but they had been given no additional resources to do that.
“You have to have someone to make the case of the border,” Kelly said. “And the only person that can address that is Carla Provost, who has been at OFO for 14 years. That’s why the president asked me to remove her.”
Kelly had just become acting head
