Lee Francis Cissna

Lee Francis Cissna (born July 5, 1966) is an American lawyer and government official who served as Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2017 to 2019. Prior to assuming that role, he was the Director of Immigration Policy in the Office of Policy of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Early life and education Cissna is the son of a Peruvian immigrant.

Career

Public sector Cissna worked at the U.S. Department of State, serving as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer stationed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Stockholm, Sweden. He also worked in the Office of the Chief Counsel under U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Cissna also served on the staff of Senator Chuck Grassley.

Private sector Cissna was an attorney at the law firm of Kaufman & Canoles in Richmond, Virginia, working in the immigration group. He also practiced law at Steptoe & Johnson LLP and Kirkpatrick & Lockhart LLP in their international trade practice group. That agency is under the Department of Homeland Security, where Cissna currently works as director of immigration policy in the Office of Policy.

The Trump administration was interested in Cissna due to his work on the displacement of U.S. workers by foreign workers on H-1B visas. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, stated that Cissna is "very knowledgeable about the immigration system" and knows "all of the wrinkles of this stuff." He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 5, 2017.

Tenure In February 2018, Cissna announced a new mission statement for USCIS. The new mission statement no longer included the phrase "USCIS secures America's promise as a nation of immigrants." When asked about the removal of this phrase, Cissna said the U.S. is "indisputably a nation of immigrants" and that the agency's mission was "not something where you put eternal professions of American values. That sort of thing belongs chiseled in the wall of a monument, not in some bureaucratic mission statement."

Cissna had a role in the Trump administration family separation policy.

According to a September 2018 profile in Politico, as the head of USCIS, Cissna has "transformed his agency into more of an enforcement body and less of a service provider."

Resignation On April 7, 2019, rumors began to float that White House advisor Stephen Miller was pressuring for the replacement of Cissna as part of larger purge of immigration and homeland security officials in the Trump administration. Sources indicated that Julie Kirchner, the former executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which pushes for lower levels of immigration, was being considered as an option to lead the agency. Senator Grassley referred to a potential firing of Cissna as "a real mistake ... to fire good people like that."

On May 24, 2019, Cissna announced in an email to USCIS employees that he had submitted his resignation at the request of President Trump, effective June 1.

On October 3, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Cissna had returned to the department's Office of Policy division in which he worked previously.

Personal life Cissna's wife's mother came to the U.S. as a Palestinian refugee in 1957. Cissna speaks English and Spanish. He has two children.