It’s hard not to have sympathy for outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

She was battered by the left as the face of last year’s family separation policy and hampered by ­adverse court rulings that pushed back against administration policies. She also found herself on the receiving end of President Trump’s anger over the failure of her department to halt the surge of illegal immigration on our southern border — a crisis the left remains determined to ignore and wish away.

On Sunday, her 16-month tour at Homeland Security came to an end when Nielsen submitted her resignation to the president.

For some Trump critics, this was yet another example of the chaos that supposedly reigns in the White House. Nielsen’s name will be added to the long list of those who have shuttled in and out of cabinet posts in the last two years. White House senior policy adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller is blamed for the shakeup at the department.

It’s easy to portray these developments as evidence of Miller’s extremism, Trump’s incompetence or maybe even administration sexism. In this telling, Trump’s administration drifts helplessly from disaster to disaster, with a cast of officials who all have one foot on a banana peel and another out the door.

Yet changing personnel can also be a sign of a decisive leader who demands results from subordinates and enforces accountability.

Think what you like of Trump, but the Border Patrol is being overwhelmed by the massive wave of people, including many families, from Central America seeking to cross illegally into the United States. They know that if they claim asylum at the border the authorities have no choice but to process and ultimately release them into the homeland.

Poverty and gang violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is largely responsible for the exodus. But asylum should be limited to those who have a ­demonstrable reason why they personally have to flee their homes. The proposition that ­everyone living in those nations has a right to live in the United States, because it offers them a better life, is absurd. The asylum process is broken and must be fixed.

Trump may not be right about America being “full.” But he is correct that we shouldn’t be expected to accept anyone who wants in, regardless of legal permission. And it’s up to the secretary of Homeland Security to come up with better ideas about how to keep illegals — who are primarily economic migrants but understand how to exploit the asylum laws and think Trump is powerless to stop them — from getting into the country.

It isn’t Nielsen’s fault that Homeland Security’s forces are inadequate to the task. Some policies she pursued on Trump’s orders — such as family separation — proved to be fiascos and created public relations headaches, even if the Obama administration had done many of the same things.

But it’s also true that Nielsen didn’t seem to have the ability to respond to the crisis in a manner that inspired the confidence of the public or the commander in chief.

In government as well as the military, when disastrous defeats occur, recovery is only possible when leaders are held accountable. Sometimes that means honorable figures must lose their jobs in order for a new team to come in, clean house and then move in a more decisive manner.

Nielsen’s successor deserves more support from Congress as well as the White House than she received, but it won’t hurt to have someone in the job who is perceived as tougher by observers on both sides of the border.

Nielsen deserves thanks for trying to carry out a thankless job, but a cabinet position isn’t an ­entitlement.

In a crisis like the one we’re facing at the border, Trump should keep firing people until he finds the ones who will do the job.



Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review. Twitter: @JonathanS_Tobin