04 August, 2017
The White House is reportedly considering former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to run the Homeland Security department as it looks to replace former boss John Kelly.
White House officials had no immediate comment.
Trump announced last week that Kelly, the former Homeland Security secretary, would replace Reince Priebus as chief of staff in a White House shakeup. They asked not to be identified discussing a personnel matter.
"Secretary Perry is focused on the important mission of the Department of Energy", Robert Haus, director of public affairs at the Energy Department, told Bloomberg".
Kelly is a retired Marine Corps general who was a strong supporter of Trump's U.S. -Mexico border wall plan and made swift moves to fortify immigration enforcement efforts in his short tenure. Since then, the two have traveled to a Boy Scout jamboree in West Virginia together, and Perry has been named one of Trump's national security advisers.
The department is now being run by Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Elaine Duke. Texas has a large Latino population, and Perry helped advance legislation that let undocumented children of immigrants pay in-state tuition for college.
On Friday, an official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Republican U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, was among those being considered to replace Kelly.
