[Chanting] Not in DC, not in the US.
In a Mexican restaurant of all places!
That’s Kirstjen Nielsen.
Here’s how she went from high school soccer star to being shouted out of a Mexican restaurant
for forcibly separating thousands of children from their parents.
Kirstjen Nielsen was raised in Clearwater, Florida, a small city in Tampa.
During high school, at Berkeley Prep she ran cross country, served as student body president,
and was a midfielder on a district championship soccer team.
She went to college at Georgetown University and studied abroad in Nagoya, Japan-
focusing on Asian studies.
A classmate who attended Georgetown with Nielsen always knew her as a Republican-
just a far more moderate and considerate one than she is today.
For instance, he says she was an internationalist — a supporter of free-trade and open borders,
she was the evil ‘globalist’ that the Steve Bannons and Stephen Millers shout about today,
perhaps a believer that all people worldwide deserve respect and humanity.
But that would change.
She worked for former Senator Connie Mack in Florida for a couple years
before returning to school at the University of Virginia’s School of Law.
Upon graduation, Nielsen landed a gig working as an associate for a Dallas law firm.
Post-9/11, Kirstjen got a job working for George W Bush, remember him?
As senior director for prevention, preparedness, and response for disasters.
In February of 2005, Nielsen got an email report that said in the event of a giant hurricane,
flooding in New Orleans “could cause similar devastation”
to the disastrous tsunami that had just hit Southeast Asia.
And more and more reports found their way to Kirstjen and other Bush aides with similar information.
One from the Homeland Security Operations Center warned them that this storm
“could leave the New Orleans area being submerged for weeks or months ...
The magnitude of this storm is expected to cause massive flooding.”
Nielsen did not heed the reports warning.
6 months after the first email, Hurricane Katrina hit and devastated New Orleans,
with an estimated nearly 2,000 lives lost.
a Senate report said.
After the poor, costly response to Hurricane Katrina,
Bush replaced Nielsen and a string of others in the office of Homeland Security.
But she wasn’t out of a job for long.
She landed as a principal of the for-profit security industry company ‘Civitas Group.’
Is that Latin?
Good for you.
And in 2012, she founded Sunesis Consulting, a firm whose online profile listed her as the sole employee.
The firm’s listed phone number was Nielsen’s personal cell phone.
Sunesis was awarded Department of Homeland Security contracts during the Obama administration,
focusing on cybersecurity.
The Trump administration looked at her career of profiting off war and not reading emails,
and knew there was one place for her:
the Department of Homeland Security.
Nielsen started as then-Secretary John Kelly’s chief of staff,
then followed him to the White House for bit.
President Trump must’ve seen something in her
that would qualify her to oversee mass deportation and separating children from their parents,
because he nominated her to be the new Secretary, replacing Kelly.
Her nomination left Department of Homeland Security
staffers literally speechless when they found out and a former Bush administration
national-security official said,
Her nomination was confirmed by a vote of 62 - 37.
And she instantly proved why Trump picked her:
She immediately cancelled the status of two hundred thousand Salvadorans
who had been living in the U.S. legally since 2001.
She claimed under oath that she couldn't remember whether Trump
had described African countries as 'shitholes.'
'Shitholes'
’Shithole countries'
In the same hearing, when asked about the President’s reported comments that
he was frustrated with people coming into the U.S. from shithole countries
like Africa and Haiti,
and wished more immigrants would come from places like Norway,
Nielsen kind of forgot what people from Norway look like:
LEAHY: Norway is a predominantly white country, isn’t it?
I actually don’t know that, sir.
But I imagine that is the case.
Norway is 95% percent white.
5% not white.
95% white.
Although she was reportedly lying for the president, it wasn’t enough.
In May of 2018, Nielsen reportedly came close to resigning after Trump berated her in front of the entire cabinet-
blaming her for a surge in illegal border crossings,
despite her hardline stance on immigration.
But she hung around.
Ever since her close call with unemployment, she has been winning the president’s heart over
by defending the policy of separating children from their parents at the border.
SESSIONS: If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you.
And that child will be separated from you as required by law.
But Nielsen blamed the separation of parents and children at the border on congress,
taking the heat off of Trump and the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.
Nielsen argued that they can’t change their practices until the republican-controlled Congress
closes loopholes on the current immigration law.
This administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border.
They did.
Congress and courts created this problem, and Congress alone can fix it.
And the President agreed!
We need 10 votes, we can’t get them from the Democrats.
You can’t do it through an executive order!
But then two days went by, possibly enough time to learn about executive orders -
or at least how to spell them,
and the President signed one,
ending his separation policy, caving to tremendous political pressure.
Kirstjen Nielsen stood right behind the president as he signed it,
when just days before, she tweeted:
However, the executive order Trump signed
does nothing to address the more than 2,300 children already separated from their parents.
Nielsen has been protested while having dinner in a Mexican restaurant,
and multiple members of congress have called for her resignation.
Meanwhile, her department is looking to build even more detention camps.
A classmate of Nielsen’s from Law School said,