Speaking during a combative hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, March 3, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem went nuclear on a number of Democratic Senators who tried to attack her and the job DHS is doing generally, skewering them for the way they are putting Americans at risk.
Particularly, Secretary Noem and several of the GOP senators there for the hearing criticized Democrats over the ongoing partial shutdown of DHS in a time of heightened security, and defended what ICE and Border Patrol agents have done as they are deployed to states like Minnesota to deal with fraud and like issues.
For example, she got in a hammering smackdown of a feud with Sen. Klobuchar over the matter of fraud in Minnesota. Sounding off on the Senator for attacking the DHS mission in Minnesota, she said, “Those investigators will continue to stay there to get to the bottom of that fraud, to make sure that those vulnerable people that rely on those programs actually get services from those federal dollars that are spent.”
Continuing, Secretary Noem sounded off on the sort of thieves who are stealing money from American taxpayers and sending it out of the country, saying that DHS will remain in Minnesota to ensure that taxpayer funding is “not stolen by criminals and used by individuals to enrich themselves and send it out of the country.”
Further attacking Sen. Klobuchar over her efforts to diminish the importance of what ICE and DHS generally are up to in Minnesota and what is being done to protect the American people, saying, “We have thousands of law enforcement operations that we do every single day. They get murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers off our streets.”
She added, on that same point, that American families have faced countless depredations at the hands of the illegal aliens against whom ICE is working, saying, “When I look at these American families that have been victimized by criminals that we have removed from cities and communities, I am grateful for the work our ICE officers do.”
And, revealing how the Democrats are putting Americans at risk in a more general statement during ht ehearing about the government shutdown, the Democrats have once again inflicted as a way of trying to strike at DHS, saying, “The latest Democrat-led shutdown of DHS is reckless, it’s unnecessary, and it undermines the American national security.”
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Adding to that, the DHS Secretary argued, “It is Senate Democrats who’ve chosen not to fund the department, and have held this department hostage.” She further said, “As a result, critical national security missions, including border security, immigration enforcement, aviation security, disaster response, cyber security, and the protection of critical infrastructure are all being strained.”
Watch her here:
She also hammered Sen. Dick Durbin during the hearing, noting that his downplaying of the sorts of crimes illegal aliens commit was horrible, saying, “Sir, when you talk about violent crimes, what you’re saying the crimes that don’t matter — that you aren’t counting — are ones that affect American families every single day.”
She further explained, commenting on what is going on with all the crimes he wanted to ignore, saying, “You’re not counting DUIs, you’re not counting embezzlements, you’re not counting theft, and you’re not counting the other crimes against people, and drug trafficking.”
Watch that here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video