Everything You Need to Know About Gen. John Kelly

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to announce retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly as his pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to two senior Trump transition officials.

Kelly is the third general the president-elect is expected to select for his cabinet and first met with Trump on Nov. 20 at a Trump-owned golf course in New Jersey.

DHS, which was established in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, is designed to coordinate America’s homeland security, which likely means Kelly will be dealing with issues like immigration, border security, domestic terror threats and cyber-security.

Here’s what you need to know about Gen. Kelly:

Name: John Francis Kelly

Age: 66

Birthplace: Boston, Mass.

What He Used to Do: Former commander of U.S. Southern Command and retired four-star general. As head of SOUTHCOM, he was responsible for Guantanamo Bay and all of U.S. military operations in South and Central America. After his retirement earlier this year, he became the armed forces’ longest-serving general.

Military Career: Kelly enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1970. His first military deployment was to Guantanamo Bay in 1971 when he was just 20 years old.

He graduated from the University of Massachusetts before returning to the Marine Corps and working his way up the ranks of service, including stints on aircraft carriers, in the nation's capital, and at Camp Pendleton.

In 1999, he served as special assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, one of NATO's two strategic commanders. By 2002, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and served -- mostly in Iraq -- with the 1st Marine Division as the assistant division commander.

After three years as a legislative assistant to the Marine Corps commandant in Washington, D.C., Kelly was promoted to major general and returned to Camp Pendleton to command 1 Marine Expeditionary Force. During his deployment in 2008 to Iraq's al-Anbar and western Ninewa provinces, he was a key military player in what became known as the Anbar Awakening, which temporarily reduced sectarian violence.

Kelly commanded Marine Forces Reserves and Marine Forces North before becoming the head of U.S. Southern Command in 2011.

What You Might Not Know About Him: Kelly is a Gold Star father. His son, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly, was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Afghanistan in 2010.

He's spoken movingly about the loss of his son and about how little some Americans know about the sacrifice of service members.

“Those with less of a sense of service to the nation never understand it when men and women of character step forward to look danger and adversity straight in the eye, refusing to blink, or give ground, even to their own deaths,” Kelly said in a Veterans Day speech in 2010.

“The protected can’t begin to understand the price paid so they and their families can sleep safe and free at night. No, they are not victims, but are warriors, your warriors, and warriors are never victims, regardless of how and where they fall. Death, or fear of death, has no power over them. Their paths are paved by sacrifice, sacrifices they gladly make -- for you," Kelly said.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

While Kelly was prepared to shut down the facility at the direction of President Obama, he did not conceal the fact that he strongly disagreed with the president's decision.

“They’re detainees, not prisoners," Kelly told Military Times earlier this year. "The lifestyle they live in Guantanamo is -- they can't simply be put in prison in the United States."

"Every one has real, no-kidding intelligence on them that brought them there," he added. "They were doing something negative, something bad, something violent, and they were taken from the battlefield. There are a lot of people that will dispute that, but I have dossiers on all of them, built and maintained by the intelligence community, both military and civilian. There are no innocent men down there," Kelly added.

South and Central America

Kelly played a key role in negotiating the Alliance for Prosperity in late 2014.

The deal had the U.S. invest $1 billion in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to "stimulate economic growth, reduce inequality, promote educational opportunities, target criminal networks responsible for human trafficking, and help create governance and institutions that are transparent and accountable," according to the White House.

At Southern Command, he was vocal about the threat of “transnational organized crime” and also warned that radicalized Muslims had left the Caribbean and South America to fight with ISIS in the Middle East.

Border Security

Kelly is a proponent of a stronger U.S. border, but also believes that more can be done to reduce the number of people fleeing across the southern border, according to a published report.

“I think you have to have -- we have a right to protect our borders, whether they’re seaward, coastlines, or land borders,” Kelly told Military Times in January.

“We have a right to do that. Every country has a right to do that. Obviously, some form of control whether it's a wall or a fence. But if the countries where these migrants come from have reasonable levels of violence and reasonable levels of economic opportunity, then the people won’t leave to come here," he said.

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