Department of Homeland Security head, Kirstjen Nielsen, was placed under intense scrutiny from several lawmakers after she spent much of her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing time denying that Trump demeaned Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa - and deflecting when presented with questions related to the alleged comment, on Tuesday, January 16.
One U.S. Senator who was particularly disturbed by Nielson's testimony was California Sen. Kamala Harris, who took exception to a particular assertion Nielson made about Norwegian immigrants being hard-workers, in defense of Trump singling the European nation out as a place he'd prefer the U.S. to receive migrants from.
“You spoke of them, according to the president, as the people of Norway - 'well, you know, they work very hard' - the inference being the people of the 54 states of Africa and Haiti do not,” Harris told Nielsen, sternly.
She then pointed out her dismay in hearing Nielsen dodge a follow-up inquiry that would have impelled her to acknowledge that Norway is a majority white nation, adding: “You run the Department of Homeland Security, and when you say you don’t know if Norway is predominantly white when asked by a member of the United States Senate, that causes me concern about your ability to understand the scope of your responsibilities and the impact of your words - much less the policies that you promulgate in that very important department."
Harris then went on to state that she found Nielsen's omission of statistics representing domestic terrorism carried out by white extremists, from her report on threats to U.S. security, concerning. Harris later double down on that point with a tweet to her 1.25 million followers that read, "It is deeply troubling that when talking about threats to our nation, Secretary Nielsen failed to mention a report that talks about some of the most rampant terror attacks that face our nation — domestic acts of terror, including white supremacist extremists."
