The White House will nominate Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Chad Wolf to be the agency’s secretary, Politico reports.
Trump called Wolf a few days ago and told him to be ready to be appointed to the position, Politico reports, citing a person familiar with the plan.
Two other officials told the outlet that the White House was in talks with GOP senators who weren’t on board with the appointment, including Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), and urged them not to oppose the nomination.
Wolf’s reported nomination comes as Trump faced a time and personnel crunch in his search to replace acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, whose last day was supposed to be Thursday but will now stay through Nov. 7, according to Politico.{mosads}
After Trump announced McAleenan’s resignation earlier this month, the Trump administration has struggled to find a DHS chief who is qualified to be appointed to the role and willing to carry out the president’s hard-line immigration agenda.
The search has been made more complicated due to a federal law that mandates an acting agency head to have served under a Senate-confirmed secretary for 90 days. There is no Senate-confirmed secretary, and the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are all acting.
Several officials within the Trump administration are concerned that Wolf won’t satisfy Trump on immigration, Politico notes, adding that the two will bump heads and cause disorder within the agency.