Nielsen ouster lays bare Trump's own immigration crisis

The forced resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is not just the usual story of an administration racked by chaos and the short shelf life of almost everyone who works for an imperious and grudge-bearing President.

Nielsen was hardly a moderate out of step with President Donald Trump on his signature issue of immigration. She became the administration's public face of the zero-tolerance policy that caused widespread outrage after hundreds of migrant children were separated from their parents.

But she is nonetheless paying the price for a crisis exacerbated by the President's decision-making amid a major surge in migrants crossing the border.

Her departure is a victory for conservative immigration voices, such as White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, who have long had Trump's ear and are pushing the President to adopt an even more hardline border policy.

It's a sign of a government stocked with acting secretaries and hampered by thin personnel benches, stretched beyond functionality by Trump's impulses and the most prodigious staffing burn rate of any modern President.
Nielsen's ouster fits with a pattern of Trump forcing out officials who have pushed back against his more radical instincts or been unable to carry them out, or who have earned his ire for being unwilling to match his defiance for governing practice and convention. They include former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former chief of staff John Kelly.
Yet there is also a more fundamental reason for Nielsen's departure that gets closer to the heart of Trump's behavior and political strategy than almost all of the many, previous exits from his administration.

Nielsen's demise is the clearest indication yet of the impossibility of reconciling Trump's ideological and emotional instincts on immigration -- which helped make him President -- with legal, humanitarian and international realities.