White House shakes up its immigration team

The White House is shaking up its roster of immigration advisers, bringing in a top border enforcement policy leader and a development expert to round out its team.

Blas Nuñez-Neto comes to the White House from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where he served as assistant secretary for border and immigration policy and was a key negotiator in a failed bipartisan Senate deal on immigration.

Marcela Escobari left her position at USAID, where she served as head of the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The dual hires reflect the Biden administration’s approach to immigration in general — one that emphasizes restricting migration at the border while opening legal avenues and investing heavily in development across Latin America in hopes of clamping down on migration flows.

Nuñez-Neto, who immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina as a child, has been instrumental in crafting policies that he sees as a middle ground on immigration.

His stance on the immigration enforcement and border security side has earned him little praise from immigrant advocates — some of the policies he has led have been the focal point of tensions between advocates and the Biden administration.

He helped develop the Biden administration’s response to the lifting of Title 42, promoting asylum conditions similar to those used under former President Trump, although they were paired with a program that would allow temporary entry to migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti if they could secure a US-based financial sponsor.

He also helped negotiate the resumption of deportation flights to Venezuela.

In the border negotiations in the Senate, he was part of the team of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, providing technical bases for negotiators to prepare the repression of that extinct bill on asylum rights.

“We look forward to DHS Deputy Secretary Blas Nuñez-Neto joining the White House and continuing his work implementing the administration’s vision in the border security and immigration spaces,” said White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández, in a statement.

“The administration will continue to fight to fix the broken immigration system and pressure Republicans in Congress to pass the historic bipartisan border security agreement they rejected for partisan political reasons.”

At DHS, Nuñez-Neto played a key role in combating migration policy nationally and internationally, becoming a regular face before Congress and in international negotiations.

“Blas Nuñez-Neto is an extremely talented and dedicated colleague. With extensive knowledge of immigration policy and deep expertise in foreign affairs, he brings a unique and invaluable perspective to some of the most complex issues we face. He is deeply admired and loved, and while we will miss him here at DHS, we look forward to working closely with him in his well-deserved new role at the White House,” Mayorkas said in a statement.

Escobari’s role in the Biden administration has been less public than Nuñez-Neto’s, but the Bolivian-born development professional has built a deep corpus of publications on domestic and foreign issues.

At USAID, she directed the agency’s office for Latin America and the Caribbean, a position she also held in 2016 under former President Obama.

“Marcela has had a tremendous impact on USAID’s work in Latin America and the Caribbean. We are grateful that she will take her vision and commitment to USAID to the White House – where she will undoubtedly work tirelessly to drive policy change,” said USAID Acting Deputy Administrator Dennis Vega.

The agency described its portfolio as “leading USAID’s efforts to advance a collaborative, regional response to the historic displacement of seven million people” across the region, as well as fighting the “economic contraction” felt deeply across Latin America. after the COVID pandemic.

“We often draw boundaries between the so-called developed and the developing, between the Global North and the Global South. …But in truth, there is no clear line when it comes to the crippling effects of poverty,” Escobari wrote in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for confirmation to his position in 2021.

“The need for inclusive and sustainable growth is as real in Appalachia as it is in Antigua.”

Escobari is replacing Katie Tobin, the National Security Council’s immigration adviser who in January announced her departure from the administration.

Between her two stints at USAID – during the Trump administration – Escobari was a fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she published extensive research on the modernization of the American workforce.

At USAID, Escobari faced internal challenges, including responding to a 2021 Office of Inspector General Report which concluded that the agency bowed to undue political pressure from the Trump administration in its efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Venezuela.

USAID has also faced external headwinds in the Americas, including from U.S. allies like Mexico, where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador criticized the agency to “openly fund organizations against the legal and legitimate government I represent,” in reference to USAID’s funding of anti-corruption civil society groups.

In his new role, Escobari will necessarily interact with the government or political decisions of López Obrador, as the Mexican president is a key actor in regional migration.

In Escobari’s area of ​​expertise, development, the Biden administration has openly caved in to López Obrador’s rhetoric prioritizing a humanitarian approach, although the US has appreciated López Obrador’s cooperation in Núñez-Neto’s territory – law enforcement.

Updated: 4:58 p.m.