FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 30, 2020

CONTACT
Hayley Burgess, burgess@nilc-ijf.org, 202-805-0375

WASHINGTON, DC — The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted today to advance the nomination of Chad Wolf for secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Government Accountability Office and at least one federal court have found that Wolf was illegally appointed as acting DHS secretary and has been serving unlawfully since November 2019. President Trump announced his official nomination late last month.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund (NILC IJF), issued the following statement:

“Chad Wolf has been deeply involved in executing the Trump administration’s cruel anti-immigrant policies and has repeatedly enabled Trump’s brazen disregard for the Constitution and the law. To confirm Wolf as DHS secretary would be an affront to the values to which we aspire as a country.

“Wolf also continues to play an active role in politicizing DHS to aid Trump’s scapegoating of immigrants to divide and distract us from Trump’s failures. He played a key role in family separation, used the COVID-19 pandemic as a shield to effectively shut down the country’s immigration and asylum systems, directed DHS agents to target protestors in Portland, and led the agency as it kept immigrants detained in hazardous, inhumane conditions as a pandemic ravaged throughout immigration detention facilities. After the Supreme Court ruled Trump’s attempt to end DACA was illegal, Wolf has continued to dismantle this successful policy.

“The stakes have never been higher. The Trump administration will continue to stack the deck against low-income immigrants, and the only way we can prevent a further assault on their rights is to exercise our power and vote, to ensure that Donald Trump is a one-term president.”

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