White House officials rebuffed efforts by their colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from white supremacists, a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy, current and former senior administration officials as well as other sources close to the Trump administration tell CNN.
"Homeland Security officials battled the White House for more than a year to get them to focus more on domestic terrorism," one senior source close to the Trump administration tells CNN. "The White House wanted to focus only on the jihadist threat which, while serious, ignored the reality that racial supremacist violence was rising fast here at home. They had major ideological blinders on."
The National Counterterrorism Strategy, issued last fall, states that "Radical Islamist terrorists remain the primary transnational terrorist threat to the United States and its vital national interests," which few experts dispute. What seems glaring to these officials is the minimizing of the threat of domestic terrorism, which they say was on their radar as a growing problem.
"Ultimately the White House just added one paragraph about domestic terrorism as a throw-away line," a senior source involved in the discussion told CNN. That paragraph mentions "other forms of violent extremism, such as racially motivated extremism, animal rights extremism, environmental extremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism." It made no mention of white supremacists. (A separate paragraph in the report mentions investigating domestic terrorists with connections to overseas terrorists, but that does not seem to be a reference to white supremacists.)
The document mentions that domestic terrorism is on the rise, but the subject is only briefly addressed, all the more stark given that FBI Director Christopher Wray's July testimony that there have been almost as many domestic terror arrests in the first three quarters of the fiscal year -- about 100 -- as there have been arrests connected to international terror. Wray noted that the majority of the domestic terrorism cases were motivated by some version of white supremacist violence, adding that the FBI takes the threat "extremely seriously."
Said a current senior Trump administration official, "DHS is surging resources to the [domestic terrorism] issue, but they're behind the curve because of lack of support from the White House. There's some legislative and appropriations work happening, but the reality is there won't be a FY20 budget for the department so they will have to make do."
Days earlier, President Donald Trump had issued a vague threat to deport "millions" of undocumented immigrants, providing few details of the effort and surprising officials within his own administration. McAleenan was concerned that the operation was half-baked and too far-reaching in scope. And he felt undermined by subordinate immigration hardliners who had a direct line to the President over the issue that Trump cares most about, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Then-acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Mark Morgan had begun hyping an upcoming operation targeting undocumented migrant families for deportation and was speaking directly with the President about it, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Arriving at the White House, McAleenan met with the acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and his deputy Emma Doyle, to make his case. The raids, he said, would anger Democrats and jeopardize the administration's request for emergency funding for the border; they should be conducted in phases rather than all at once; and he argued the department needed more time to build out the proper messaging, said a former senior administration official.
On June 22, Trump suspended the operation, citing objections from Democratic lawmakers. But it's not clear Democratic objections drove his decision and sources said Trump's decision to postpone the operation allayed McAleenan's concerns that his advice as the DHS chief was not being heeded. And, days later, Congress passed the $4.5 billion emergency border funding bill that McAleenan thought the ICE raids could undermine.
Immigration hardliners accused McAleenan, without direct evidence, of leaking details of the ICE operation, charges he has denied. The operation targeting 2,000 families ordered removed by an immigration judge eventually took place a month later, but fell short of its goal -- resulting in the arrest of 35 migrants
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The episode put into view the tensions within the Department of Homeland Security and the rocky relationship between McAleenan and the White House. McAleenan, who has been increasingly surrounded by Trump loyalists and immigration hardliners, has at times been frustrated that some officials go around him, as he has grappled for control of the department, multiple administration officials tell CNN.
McAleenan took over in April after Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was pushed out of her role at the urging of White House senior adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller. McAleenan, who was commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, had the backing of the President's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.
But while Trump elevated McAleenan, he still sees the acting secretary -- a career official who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama -- as having an allegiance to the previous administration.