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KIRSTJEN NIELSEN

Secretary of Homeland Security
2017-2019
@kirstjenmn

HOMELAND SECURITY SEC. KIRSTJEN NIELSEN DEFENDS TRUMP'S EMERGENCY DECLARATION: 'THIS IS TRULY AN EMERGENCY'

March 6, 2019

Nielsen was asked whether there had ever been a parent deported under her tenure without being given the opportunity to take their children with them.


"To the best of my knowledge, every parent was afforded that option," she said.

That statement seems to be at odds with what some migrants say has happened. Last week, 24 migrant parents said they were separated and deported without their children.

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN RESIGNS AS TRUMP’S HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY

April 7, 2019

While Mr. Trump often blamed Ms. Nielsen for the surge in migrant crossings, she will be remembered for leading the department during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy along the southwestern border, which initially resulted in the separation of thousands of migrant children from their families.


An intense backlash ensued, and the Department of Homeland Security was unprepared to deal with separating nearly 3,000 children from their parents.

“Hampered by misstep after misstep, Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure at the Department of Homeland Security was a disaster from the start,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and the chairman of the House’s committee on Homeland Security. “It is clearer now than ever that the Trump administration’s border security and immigration policies — that she enacted and helped craft — have been an abysmal failure and have helped create the humanitarian crisis at the border.”

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN WANTS THE WORLD TO THINK SHE ‘SPOKE TRUTH TO POWER’

October 23, 2019

“I don’t regret enforcing the law, because I took an oath to do that,” she said. She claims she simply wanted to “enforce the law, not to separate families.”


But that’s precisely the order that Nielsen green lighted: the April 2018 memo gave DHS the authority to “permissibly direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.” The effects of the policy are still being felt today. Before a U.S. District judge halted the administration’s zero-tolerance policy in June 2018, approximately 2,700 migrant children were ripped from their parents and thrown into cages, where the traumatized kids were subjected to horrific living conditions and abuse. As of now, it’s unclear exactly how many migrant children have yet to be reunited with their parents or allowed into the U.S., if that’s even a possibility.

CELEBRATE BARR’S LAST DAY BY REMEMBERING TWO OTHER TRUMP OFFICIALS WHO SOLD OUT THEIR COUNTRY

December 23, 2020

Nielsen will go down in infamy as the implementer of the Trump administration’s sick policy of taking children away from parents who illegally entered the United States. She lied about that, too, but it was tough to deny, what with the memo she signed making it “permissible to separate minors from adult family members.” After The Post described Nielsen’s denial as “Orwellian,” Nielsen went defiant, stating that she was just enforcing the law, and implied that if parents wanted to keep children, they shouldn’t bring them to the United States without the proper documents.

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