When John Kelly moved from the Department of Homeland Security to the White House, there was an interim period when an Obama holdover named Elaine Duke was acting secretary of homeland security.  During that time, Duke decided that Haitians living in America under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), due to an earthquake seven years earlier, could and should return home.  Duke gave the Haitians eighteen months to leave the country – an unreasonably long period of time.

At the time, it seemed as though Trump had pressured Duke to end TPS for the Haitians, and Duke, reluctantly agreeing, built in the extra eighteen months to benefit the Haitians.

But now, John Kelly's handpicked successor at DHS, Kirstjen Nielsen, has made a similar decision regarding 263,000 El Salvadorans who were granted "temporary" residence in the United States – "temporary" for over seventeen years.  Secretary Nielsen, whom "Sloppy Steve" Bannon's Breitbart calls "Lady DACA," while ordering the El Salvadorans to go home, also has given the El Salvadorans eighteen months to leave the country.  Such a decision could not have been made without Trump's approval.

It certainly doesn't require eighteen months to leave the country.  A landlord doesn't need eighteen months to evict a tenant.  An employer doesn't need eighteen months to fire an employee.  A man doesn't need eighteen months to break up with his girlfriend, although there are sometimes legitimate reasons to drag the process out.

The only explanation I can think of is that the Trump administration doesn't want to enforce its own decision and wants to leave it up to the next administration to do so.  This delay will give the El Salvadorans more time to "go into the shadows," more time to apply for green cards, more time to create more anchor babies, collect welfare, take jobs from Americans, and, for some, to collect a paycheck from MS-13.

It feels suspiciously as if the Trump administration is kicking the can down the road, because the deadline to leave will not take place until nearly the last year of the Trump administration's first term.  You can bet that if a Democrat wins in 2020, none of those "temporary" refugees will be going home.  It would have been much better if these people had been given a reasonable period of time – say, a month or two – so ICE could start pursuing them sooner.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.