Ken Cuccinelli

Ken Cuccinelli served as Acting Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for the Trump Administration from 2019-2021, a position he was unlawfully appointed to in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. Throughout his tenure in the administration, Cuccinelli was a cornerstone to the successful execution of Trump’s most aggressive immigration policies.

The author of the DHS chapter of Project 2025, Cuccinelli stated that FEMA-issued grant funding should only go to states or cities that are “in compliance with federal law” or policy and which are committed to “total information-sharing” in the context of both federal law and immigration enforcement. He also calls for increasing use of Expedited Removal from the current limit (within 100 miles of the border) to the full country. Trump has also promised to take immigration authority further, stating: “On Day One of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that…going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.” This disregards the 14th Amendment’s express provision on birthright citizenship. Cuccinelli states DHS should eliminate T visas (for victims of human trafficking) and U visas (for victims of certain crimes who are helpful to law enforcement).

Cuccinelli was first appointed to the Trump administration in a newly created position of “Principal Deputy Director” of USCIS, which according to Department of Homeland Security officials, allowed him to then be appointed as Acting Director under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA). According to the Chairs of the House committees on Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Government Oversight: “We write to express our deep concern over the June 10, 2019, appointment of Ken Cuccinelli to serve as Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). It appears that Mr. Cuccinelli was appointed in a manner that circumvents the Federal Vacancies Reform Act after Republican Senators told President Trump that the Senate would not confirm Mr. Cuccinelli as Director.” In early 2020, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Cuccinelli’s appointment as USCIS director was illegal because he had never served in a subordinate role to any other USCIS official. This decision caused the suspension of all directives issued by him.

As the administrator of USCIS, Cuccinelli was in charge of the systems for legal immigration and naturalization. He made repeated false and xenophobic statements throughout his tenure. In July 2019, Cuccinelli blamed an asylum seeker and his daughter for their deaths, stating: “The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because those folks, that father didn’t want to wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion, so decided to cross the river.” Cucinnelli also said in an interview that the administration is prepared to deport approximately 1 million undocumented immigrants who have final removal orders already in place. And, on August 12, 2019, Cuccinelli announced a revised regulation, to go into effect October 15, 2019, expanding the public charge requirements for legal immigration. (Green cards and visas can be denied if people are likely to need federal, state and local government benefits including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid.) When asked whether this change contradicted the poem welcoming the impoverished and persecuted engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, Cuccinelli offered a revision, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

Under his tenure, Cuccinelli defended the deployment of federal agents dressed in camouflage and tactical gear to Portland, Oregon, where they picked up protestors and took them into unmarked vehicles. Cuccinelli also reduced oversight of the DHS’s intelligence arm, making it unnecessary for it to get approval from the DHS’s civil liberties office in producing intelligence products. Since the change, the DHS’s intelligence arm began compiling intelligence reports on journalists who covered the deployment of DHS agents to Portland, Oregon. According to a whistleblower complaint released in September 2020, Cuccinelli ordered the intelligence branch at DHS to modify its intelligence assessments to downplay the threat posed by white supremacy groups and to instead focus on “left-wing” groups and the antifa movement.

In the final weeks of Trump’s term, Cuccinelli worked to limit the ability of the Biden administration to make changes to DHS policy regarding immigration. On January 8th, 2021, he signed a memorandum of understanding between the DHS and Texas, in which he laid out information sharing agreements as well as a commitment from the DHS to “consult Texas and consider its views before taking any action, adopting or modifying a policy or procedure, or making any decision” that could have an effect on immigration enforcement.

Today, Cuccinelli serves as the Senior Fellow for Immigration and Homeland Security at Russ Vought’s Center for Renewing America, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member. In this role, he regularly advocates for extreme immigration policies and for Donald Trump’s policy positions. In a 2021 paper, Cuccinelli proposed that governors in border states should activate and deploy all National Guard units to the border under state war powers to “detain and return illegal immigrants back across the border, turn back illegal immigrants to Mexico at the border, and defend (with kinetic action if necessary) against Cartel operatives, human traffickers, and drug mules.” He also called for non-border state governors to deploy their National Guard units with similar orders, for the Texas governor to deploy the Texas State Guard, and for the deputization of citizens to work alongside state and local law enforcement.

In 2021, Cuccinelli became the Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative (ETI), a joint project of the Susan B. Anthony List and American Principles Project to oppose federal campaign finance and voter expansion legislation.

In 2023, Ken Cuccinelli was questioned by a grand jury tied to an investigation led by Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith. Prior to the grand jury, the January 6th Committee also questioned Cuccinelli about his role in the attack. Per CNN: “Cuccinelli was a notable figure in Donald Trump’s attempts to use his administration to pursue unfounded election fraud claims after the 2020 election and was a frequent presence around Trump’s Oval Office.” Cuccinelli “messaged then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in November 2020 about Dominion voting machines, which Trump’s advisers falsely believed were part of a fraud conspiracy in the election, according to the committee’s final report.”

When Cuccinelli was announced as Acting Director, the head of the union representing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees released a statement against the appointment, stating, “It has become clear that the goal of this Administration is to end immigration all together [sic]. How better to do that then by appointing as the leader of USCIS someone who knows nothing about immigration, Adjustment of Status or Naturalization, and whose sole purpose is to destroy the agency that grants these benefits.”

This profile has been updated.