Posted on 09/13/2021 10:08:22 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Karen Olick, chief of staff to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, announced Monday that she will be leaving for an undisclosed opportunity.
Jennifer Higgins, the current associate director of Refugee, Asylum and International Operations at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, will step in as a temporary chief of staff until a new appointment is made, according to officials in the department. Olick plans to leave DHS at the end of the month.
In an email, Mayorkas told DHS officials that Olick “has decided to resign her position and pursue new opportunities. We are grateful to Karen for her service during the critical first nine months of the new Administration.”
In a separate farewell note, Olick also said: “Though too often underappreciated by our fellow citizens, I am continually struck by how many millions of Americans sleep in safety every night because so many at DHS do not sleep.” Olick didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The shakeup comes as the Biden administration tries to grapple with the flow of migrants at the southern border. Higgins is a career civil servant and has worked for the federal government for over 20 years, whereas Olick was most recently a prominent official at SKDK, the powerful Democratic strategic communications firm. She recently led the firm’s ballot initiative practice.
Employees and senior officials at DHS have also been working non-stop on other crises that their department is taking a lead on including responding to the impacts of Hurricane Ida and helping vet tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who the U.S. evacuated from Kabul in August.
During the busy time for the department, one career DHS official said that some DHS career employees have been not happy that career people with critical security positions have had to go into the office while some senior political appointees in the front office haven’t gone in that much. That's a departure from the Trump administration, when many political appointees went in to the office during much of the pandemic last year. Some of the senior career officials have had to call some political appointees to tell them they had to come in to review and sign off on important classified documents, according to this official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It’s impacted morale and caused tension that the political people are setting rules and the rules don't always apply to them,” the official said. A DHS spokesperson said that the agency is still operating on “maximum telework flexibility to all” guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management.
Kicking out the COS at an agency is hardly a “shake-up.” He/she is usually a political hack to spy on the front office for the White House and the position is responsible for the smooth flow of business in the Secretaries office, significant correspondence, appointments to meet with folks in the front office, the comings and goings at meetings.
Another underling. Something is better than nothing, I suppose.
There is a rumor that Blinken would be resigning sometime this week. Not holding breath.
This Admin seems incapable of any level of self reflection.
That's it. Karen got a reward for service and thought she could cruise through it like so many other Biden picks. Trump's agency picks, like 'em or not, at least went in to work during The Rona Time and took a stab at it.
Who knows for sure? I saw a film clip of Rep Mast, call Blinken a bald faced lying sack of Shiite, to his face. I hope it was not just empty words, that we are so used to hearing.
I would agree....for each ‘hack’ occupying an office in DC presently....there’s at least forty folks ‘in-waiting’ status to take their position.
The most someone can take from this....the job probably has turned into a 60-hour a week job, with conflicting instructions from the White House making it impossible to have a concrete strategy.
There is no security for the homeland under O’Biden! He is flying unvetted Afghani’s who haven’t even been tested for covid into the interior of the USA. That should eventually give the police more to do and some good news is that a wrongly canceled show is coming back. I saw an article about that, “Bad boys — or good guys? “Cops” to return Oct 1”, and you can give that a look at HotAir. And the FBI crime stats show just 10 unarmed black people were killed by police in 2019, with 5 of those trying to use their vehicle to attack officers first. That is out of 43,000,000 (13% of USA population). Another stat, of the people flown out of Afghanistan by Joe under 5% were Americans.
Nobody guarding the border means our homeland was never secure anyway.
After the lie filled performance before congress it should happen.
>> a difficult time for the agency.
DHS puts food on the table. I get that.
But it’s difficult to have sympathy for agency that deems us to be the problem.
One of Trump’s final appointments as 45 involved a meeting with Border Patrol and locals at a recent Wall construction site. It was an amazing moment that touched on the commitments so many fulfill day after day.
Patriotism has been marginalized to the absurd example of a dude smacking his Woke neighbor with the Flag — lol, it’s nonetheless a good example, but... That Marxist fiction is meant to obscure the appreciation we normally show for our Nation’s heroes.
Smells like a resignation due to vaccination requirement
How will they be able to handle the Saturday insurrection© without her?
She used to be a managing director of SKDKnocerbocker which is a major Democrat PR and consulting firm. She will certainly land on her feet a d looks like she got out before it blew up in her face
How many millions of Americans now sleep with a gun every night because no border security, unvetted refugees, rampant human trafficking, exploding crime rates, Antifa/BLM riots, defund the police idiocy.
my thoughts are that a scandal is going to srface in homeland security and wh ever is runing it will have there reputation ruined so befor the information surfaces in the media leaving to minimize the dammage.
Lol, when I read that the first thought was ‘over inflated sense of worth’. Mostly the fed agencies are a hugely expensive no-op and in many cases of negative value.
This is so random. Was there some event that triggered this?
Hopefully this is just the first of many jumping ship.
Welcome to the Democrat way of government.
Nothing difficult about that.
The "difficulty" is going to come later. How we're going to pay for these unwashed, filthy turd world mongrels who speak messycan, chink or raghead.
Not to mention, when the psycho ragheads start shooting up grade schools and jewish temples.
But the border enforcers? Nah. Nothing difficult about that. Capture an invader. Advise him how to milk the system. Give him a "welcome to America." And let him go.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.