Anti-Immigrant Policies
- Mizelle signed a proposal to limit asylum eligibility, ostensibly as a public health measure, which a group of asylum officers later criticized as serving “no purpose other than to advance the Administration’s political objective to shut down the U.S. asylum program—at whatever cost to human life.” [Washington Post, 07/08/20; CBS, 08/10/20]
- Mizelle worked on then-Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli’s effort to coordinate last-minute agreements with states in an attempt to prevent the incoming Biden administration from rolling back Trump administration policies [American Oversight, 04/15/20]
- Emails show that Mizelle, as DHS chief of staff, coordinated with We Build the Wall, a private border-wall group whose leaders were later charged with fraud. [American Oversight, 03/25/21]
- Mizelle wrote a memo laying out how DHS could purchase private cell phone location data in order to aid in ICE operations without obtaining a warrant or violating the Fourth Amendment. [Buzzfeed News, 10/30/20]
Anti-Democratic Efforts
- While Mizelle served as acting general counsel at DHS, the agency led violent crackdowns on anti-racism protestors in Portland, Oregon. [Washington Post, 07/22/20]
- Mizelle defended Trump’s illegal appointment of acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli despite a non-partisan government watchdog concluding that the appointments violated federal law. [Law & Crime, 08/18/20]
News Coverage and Headlines
- “Former Special Counsel at the Dept. of Defense, Ryan Goodman, calls Mizelle ‘unqualified and a Trump loyalist.’” [Raw Story, 02/12/20]
- “[Stephen] Miller has worked closely with a web of political appointees throughout the administration, including…lawyer Chad Mizelle…These hardliners feel that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen…isn’t being creative or tough enough in using executive authority to carry out the president’s immigration agenda.” [Politico, 06/04/18]
- “University of Texas law professor Steve Vladecksaid Mizelle’s letter epitomized the government’s superficial approach to legal work under the Trump administration. ‘The actual legal ‘argument’ in DHS’s response to GAO on Wolf and Cuccinelli is risible. But then there’s the tone and the hubris—a 2013 law school grad (the ‘senior official performing the duties’ of GC) criticizing a GAO staffer for his inexperience,’ Vladeck wrote. ‘This letter is the epitome of lawyering in the Trump administration: Offer flatly unconvincing legal arguments that might seem superficially plausible to (non-expert) Trump supporters, then distract with overblown rhetoric, ad hominem attacks, hyperbole, and partisan innuendo.’” [Law and Crime, 08/18/20]