Monday brought carnage to the administration of Donald Trump, as he began to weed out adversaries that seemed to stand in the way between him and his ban on refugees and immigrants from seven different countries. One of the casualties was acting immigration enforcement director Daniel Ragsdale, who was fired under a cloud of secrecy.
A late casualty
Ragsdale became a deputy director of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2012. He received one of the greatest honors of his career when he became the director of the organization upon the inauguration of Donald Trump.
He had no idea that he would be fired just ten days later.
The rationale behind the relieving of Ragsdale wasn't immediately clear in the aftermath of the news, but it likely had something to do with the enforcement of the immigration ban. The executive action signed by Trump has been met with resistance, both by protesters and in American federal court systems. The latter issue is why another member of the acting administration was fired on Monday night.
A bizarre night
The first person to go in the Trump administration was Sally Yates, who was the acting attorney general and a holdover from the Barack Obama administration. She refused to allow her staff to defend the immigration ban in court, worried about both the legal and justice issues involved.
She was almost immediately fired, with Trump labeling her defiance as a betrayal of the new administration.
After Yates and Ragsdale were both fired, people began to draw comparisons to the "Saturday Night Massacre," a famous scandal from Richard Nixon's presidency. He fired his attorney general for failing to fire the special prosecutor looking into Watergate, then fired the next person in charge for the same reason before finally finding someone who would get rid the special prosecutor. Just a year later, Nixon would resign in disgrace.
The Trump presidency may not be heading in that direction, but the immigration ban certainly has a lot of people hoping it does.