From the tailings-pond of former staffers to Sen. Jeff Sessions who have been appointed to high position within the Trump administration, one individual has managed thus far to draw but scant media and public attention despite being at the very center of the administration's anti-immigration policies. As Jonathan Blitzer phrased it:
A crucial role has also been played by a lesser-known figure: Gene Hamilton, a lawyer in his mid-thirties who works as a top aide to Sessions at the Justice Department. Federal officials, congressional staffers, advocacy groups, and think-tank researchers know that Hamilton has helped shape Trump’s various travel bans, changes to refugee policies, and the implementation of an aggressive new approach to immigration enforcement. And yet, as one immigration lawyer told me of Hamilton, “he’s had such a light footprint.” Hamilton has rarely spoken to the press, and his relatively short career means that few can claim to know the exact nature of his beliefs or goals.
A “light footprint,” indeed. While Steve Bannon, John Kelly, Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller have been the noxious public faces of this administration's anti-immigration efforts, Gene Hamilton has worked below the radar to draft and defend these efforts, first as the self-described “lead on development of all immigration-policy issues for the [Trump] transition entity,” then as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy (through early November 2017, under Kelly and Duke) and now as a top aide to Sessions at the Department of Justice.
Let's piece together what we can of Gene Patrick Hamilton's curriculum vitae, and then I'll explain my reasoning for proposing that it is Hamilton who was the lead for Sessions' joint (sorta) DOJ / DHS report on immigration and terrorism.
The most complete biographical statement I've found for Gene Hamilton is from a Biometric ID industry expo in 2016 (pdf) at which Hamilton was a panelist for the session entitled “Congressional Panel – Enhancing Borders and Security: Philosophy, Politics and Economics.”
Gene P. Hamilton, General Counsel, Senator Jeff Sessions, Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration & the National Interest, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, USA
Gene Hamilton is currently the General Counsel to Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-AL) on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest. As General Counsel to Chairman Sessions, Mr Hamilton is responsible for the Subcommittee’s legislative portfolio, advising the Chairman on immigration and homeland security issues, preparing Subcommittee hearings, and assisting with other related matters. Prior to his appointment as General Counsel, Mr Hamilton served as an Assistant Chief Counsel at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he advised law enforcement officers and represented the federal government in litigation before the U.S. Immigration Court in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Board of Immigration Appeals. Prior to that, Mr Hamilton served as an Attorney Advisor in the Secretary’s Honors Program for Attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security – rotating through the Department and providing legal guidance at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Operations and Enforcement Law Division of the Office of the General Counsel, the Intelligence Law Division of the Office of the General Counsel, and at the Transportation Security Administration.
Mr Hamilton is a graduate of the Washington & Lee University School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude and was inducted into the Order of the Coif, and received a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from the University of Georgia. He is married and resides with his family in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
So, Hamilton attended the University of Georgia and was graduated in 2005 with a B.A. in International Affairs. He was active in the College Republicans and, during his senior year at UGa, he was a field organizer for Bush' reelection campaign (pdf):
For 20-year-old Hamilton, a senior at the University of Georgia, that purpose is getting George W. Bush re-elected. Hamilton said he jumped at the chance to be a field representative for the campaign during the fall semester when his campusʼ College Republicans group mentioned the opportunity last spring. After Hamilton applied online, the CRNC interviewed him and hired him as a St. Louis representative.
Hamilton also penned one letter to UGa’s student newspaper (29 January 2004):
Complainers should take responsibility
Let me start off by saying that not informing the community about the University closing was unfortunate. However, the opinions voiced in the Red & Black on Tuesday were absolutely absurd. "Someone should be held responsible" (what, besides yourself for going out and slipping on ice?). "Student faces falls to get to campus" (be a little more careful walking my friend). Come on! Sure the University messed up, big deal. Be accountable for your own actions! As John Stossel would say, "Give me a break."
GENE HAMILTON
Senior, Grayson
International Affairs
There’s that “compassionate conservatism” we all know and love, with a dash of Stossel-ian libertarianism to boot. On immigration, however, Hamilton would now assuredly side with Coulter in the Stossel-Coulter dust-up.
After a few years off, Hamilton attended Washington & Lee University School of Law. He had an internship at an ICE detention center in Miami in Summer 2008 and was graduated in 2010, even featuring on the cover of the School’s Spring/Summer 2010 magazine. From there, he participated in the Department of Homeland Security’s Secretary’s Honors Program:
“I very much enjoyed my time as an Honors Attorney. From the start, I had real assignments – as opposed to cite-checking someone else’s memo or doing document review. The experience equipped me with a broad-based DHS perspective, from which I believe I can draw upon now in my work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” – Gene
[Gene is a 2010-2012 Honors Attorney who rotated through CBP, OELD, the Intelligence Law Division of OGC, and TSA. He accepted a permanent position in the Office of the Chief Counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Atlanta, Georgia.]
As noted in that blurb, following his post-grad stint at DHS Hamilton took a permanent position as a trial attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Atlanta, a position he held through February 2015. What is glaringly NOT noted in that blurb is that it is precisely the period from 2012 to 2015/16 when the Immigration Court in Atlanta was honing its reputation as the toughest in America (WaPo; Marshall Project; Asylumist). From the third link:
It’s true that the Office of the Chief Counsel (“OCC”) and the Immigration Court are independent of each other, but I think we can safely glean a few things about the Atlanta OCC from what we know of the Court.
For one, since Immigration Judges will usually grant cases where the parties agree on relief, it seems likely that OCC attorneys in Atlanta rarely determine that a case should be approved for asylum. Of course, we do not know about the quality of the asylum cases in Atlanta—maybe they are unusually weak (a real possibility since sophisticated litigants will avoid Atlanta due to its low grant rate). But it would be strange indeed if almost no cases there meet the relatively low threshold required for asylum. The fact that the OCC is not stipulating to asylum on occasion indicates that they are taking a very hard line against such cases (this contrasts with many other jurisdictions, where the local OCCs regularly conclude that applicants qualify for asylum). The job of OCC attorneys is not merely to deport as many people as possible; they are supposed to do justice. This means agreeing to relief where it is appropriate. The low grant rate in Atlanta may indicate that OCC lawyers there are prioritizing “winning” over doing justice, and ideology above the law—all worrying signs as these attorneys move into national leadership positions.
“Attorneys,” plural. In 2015 not only did Gene Hamilton depart Atlanta OCC to take up a position as General Counsel to Sen. Jeff Sessions but Tracy Short (currently serving as the Principal Legal Advisor for ICE) also departed Atlanta OCC to take up a position as counselor in Rep. Goodlatte’s office. James McHenry, who served in the Atlanta OCC from 2010 to 2014, has recently been appointed Director of the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
In February 2015, then, Hamilton moved to the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, where he served as Counsel for Sessions’ anti-immigrant work on the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, work that dovetailed with that of Sens. Grassley and Flake and Reps. Goodlatte and Gowdy. Hamilton is listed as contact on numerous letters from these very fine people to Obama administration officials on matters of “criminal aliens” (12 June 2015; 16 June 2015) and illegals “amassing” on the SW border (03 November 2016).
Now, on the matter of Sessions’ DOJ/DHS much criticized recent report on immigration and terrorism, it is critical to recall that Sens. Sessions and Cruz and their staffs began asking DOJ and DHS for data correlating terrorism and immigration status in August 2015. DOJ replied on 13 January 2016 with tabular data maintained by the National Security Division. Since DHS did not maintain the sort of information requested by Sessions and Cruz, the Senators note that:
Based on open-source research conducted on a list provided by the Department of Justice, the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest has determined that at least 380 of the 580 individuals convicted of terrorism or terrorism-related offenses between September 11, 2001 and December 31, 2014, were born abroad.
Given his position as General Counsel to Sen. Sessions on that Subcommittee, I find it beyond reason that Gene Hamilton was NOT intimately involved with said “open-source research” and the systematic misrepresentation of the National Security Division dataset. Indeed, I find it logical that Hamilton continued this work while at DHS and it was thus he and his staffers who provided the “DHS” cover for Sessions’ joint DOJ/DHS report.
So… let’s summarize: Gene Hamilton was active in the Atlanta OCC when the Immigration Court system there was gaining its hardline reputation; he moved from there to serve on Sen. Sessions’ staff in furtherance of Sen. Sessions’ anti-immigrant policy positions, meeting Stephen Miller; he served as an advisor to the Trump campaign and transition team on all matters related to immigration; in DHS he drafted and defended the administration’s travel bans and termination of DACA; and now he’s back with Sessions in DOJ, in a position where he can advise on enforcement of the anti-immigration policies he shaped at DHS. To return to Jonathan Blitzer’s article:
Hamilton acknowledged that he’d had several conversations, before Trump’s Inauguration, with Stephen Miller about cancelling DACA. He’d discussed the matter with John Kelly, too, when Kelly was the Secretary of D.H.S., as early as February—seven months before the Administration ended the policy. Hamilton acknowledged having strong personal views on the matter dating back to his time as an attorney at ICE. His friends and associates knew how he felt about DACA, he said. “They would generally be aware of my position that the program was illegal and that there should be some kind of disposition associated with it,” he said.
[...]
That morning [05 September 2017], the acting Secretary of D.H.S., Elaine Duke, signed a memo that officially terminated the policy. “Did you draft that memo?” Tumlin asked in the deposition. “Yes,” Hamilton said.
Time to shine a much, much brighter light on Gene Patrick Hamilton.
