President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, was recently asked to “set aside” her focus on locating the hundreds of thousands of children who have been lost under the Biden administration. The incident occurred when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) was illustrating Democratic concerns about family separation at the border.
Blumenthal began, “I want to call your attention to an effort that I’ve led to help reunite children with their parents, children who were separated as a result of the so-called family separation policy in the last administration.” He added, “I have introduced a measure called Keep Families Together, not only to limit separation of families at or near ports of entry, but also the Families Belong Together Act for several congresses to help bring the children, the kids who were victims of this policy and who still are not big back with their parents.”
“I hope that you will support that kind of effort,” the Connecticut Democrat concluded. In her response, Noem informed him that it was never a policy under the Trump administration to separate families, but rather one “zero tolerance.” Noem proceeded to draw attention to the larger issue that more than 300,000 children have gone missing under Biden’s leadership.
“Senator, the Trump administration never had a family separation policy,” she said. “They had a zero-tolerance policy, which said that our laws would be followed. What I’m alarmed by is the over 300,000 children that went missing during the Biden administration.” The South Dakota Governor noted that it is alarming that the president is not more concerned about locating these missing children.
“And when we talk about children and what they’re potentially facing as far as victimization in this country, in the traffic trafficking that’s going on, this administration’s lack of desire to find out where those children are, what they may be going through is alarming to me, and I want to stop that,” she explained to Blumenthal who interrupted her.
The senator said, “So I’m just going to interrupt again with apologies to say, let’s put aside…” Noem interjected maintaining that she can’t disregard such a problem. “Well, I can’t put aside 340,000 children. However, Blumenthal spoke over her, “Let’s put aside what happened in the past. There are still 1000 children who are separated and waiting to be reunited. I’d like your commitment that you’re going to continue the effort to reunite them with their parents.”
Noem responded, “Senator, keeping families together is critically important to me and to this country. I’m concerned about Lake and Riley’s family that they no longer have her. I’m concerned about the fact that that we have people in this country that don’t know where their children are, or people in other countries who sent their children here and they’ve been lost by this administration. So yes, my focus will be to keep families together. We will uphold our law, and we’ll make sure that we’re doing everything we can to keep our children safe from the trafficking and the drug epidemic that’s hit this country.”
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Watch a clip from the confirmation hearing below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.