Name: Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Kirstjen Nielsen Reflects on Signing the Controversial Detention Migrant Policy
Uploaded: 2019-10-22
Duration: 17 min 32 s
Description: Kirstjen Nielsen Reflects on Signing the Controversial Detention Migrant Policy

Hi, everyone. Thank you for being here. And thank you secretary for being here as well. Pleasure. I want to begin by asking you about the topic on everyone's mind right now but is the decision back in 2018 to separate families and children, families further at the southern border. In April of 2018 memo came before you when you were head of Homeland Security. And it read that if you signed it you could permissively direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors health and immigrant detention so the parent or legal guardian could be prosecuted. You sign that allowing for For the separation of parents and children at the southern border. Do you regret signing that memo. Yes. So I think first of all I wanted to start by saying thank you all for having here. I think these are very important as we heard just before, there was some controversy. But from m y view, these issues are so important. That we really need more voices and we need to be additive and find a way to come together to solve the problem and not work on taking people apart. It's very divisive. It's very emotional. It's very complex lives are at stake. Many people have been affected. But unfortunately the reality is and we'll talk more about this and I'll get to your question in two seconds. The system is broken. You know it the rules, the laws, the facilities were all built during a time when the vast majority of people coming across the border were single males actually from Mexico. It was very easy to return them. It was a very short period of time, returned them if they didn't have a legal right to stay. But now what we see is over 60 % of this traveling here are families, and over 60 % of those traveling are from other parts of the south of us mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. So The fluids have changed, but the laws and the facilities have not. So we have a terrible mismatch. And we have a huge need to come together to solve this. With respect to the particular question. There is a lot of confusion about what happened and what didn't happen. And I do think it's really important to discuss, because the only way we can get to solutions is when we really understand What happened and what that what the facts are and what worked and what didn't work and what shouldn't have worked and what perhaps could have worked better. Secretary apologize I know my time with you is limited but. [ CROSSTALK ] Yeah the Attorney General announced zero tolerance. Zero Tolerance was the direction that a lobby enforce. There is a law that says, it's illegal to come into our country between ports of entry. There's 90 ports of entry around 90 ports of entry on the Southern border. What I did the entire time I was secretaries encourage people to go to the ports because it's much safer. This is a terrible journey that people take to come here. outside groups tell us 70 % of migrants are victims of violence. 30 % of women are raped. We give pregnancy test girls as young as 10 so that we can protect them when we receive them. So the decision is zero tolerance was to enforce the law. Unfortunately, like everywhere in the United States, there isn't a exclusion for purposes of immigrants. If a parent commits a crime. They go to a custodial setting and their child is not followed up. The idea and the quay and the concept of zero tolerance is decided by the attorney general was not to separate families. It was to enforce a law to encroach people to go to the courts eventually. What happened now was out of the 49, 000 children that came un accompanied, meaning they were sent without their parents There was a percentage of those that was added to that number because their parents went into a prosecutorial setting. So I just wanna be very clear as to what was decided and what was not decided, we didn't. I am to be clear asking you about your decision to sign a memo in April of 2018, and endorse. Separating families at the Southern border. And it did not. What it did was it said we were going to enforce the law, There was no, to be clear, there is no Federal law mandating separation of families No, there's the Federal law that says it's illegal to cross between ports of entry. That's right The Judge said, That, yes, it's illegal. And the judge said yes, in the United States, we don't send kids to prison or to a custodial setting with their parents. The decision was to enforce the law, not to separate families. And if anything. I think we should be very clear about this. There was a policy change at DOJ That was called zero tolerance that said, Now everyone crossing the southern border would be prosecuted. In order to do that they needed children separated from their parents so parents could be prosecuted in your role as the head of Homeland Security. You had to allow for your agents to separate children from their family. You made that decision in the spring of 2018, I'm asking you if you regret making that decision. I don't regret enforcing the law because I took an oath to do that, as did everybody at the Department of Homeland Security. We don't make the laws. We asked Congress to change the law. Congress reviewed the law in 2006 and decided to continue to make it illegal to cross in that manner. What I do wish had worked a lot better is that the coordination and information flow were simply insufficient for that number of people coming. It's heartbreaking, that any family smelted anytime that they had to cross the border illegally. This is a terrible, dangerous journey. It's terrible. So what I regret is that we haven't solved it and what I regret is that that information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families Was clearly not in place. And that's why the practice was stopped through an executive order. In the lead up to that policy being signed. We know on the other side of the government on HHS where they were responsible for the care and custody of those children. They were raising red flags. They saw the numbers of children coming in being separated and said this will cause lifelong trauma and harm to these children. There should not be an official policy to separate children. We now know also in your agency senior staff Raised concerns about civil rights issues and trauma to children. Did anyone in the lead up to you signing off on family separation raise those concerns with you? Everything was of courser reviewd by the office of civil rights and celebrities, which was reviewd by the lawyers. These were the recommendations from the operational entities to enforce the law, becaise from their perspective there are Law enforcement agents who've taken an oath, and that's their duty. The bigger challenge here is to prevent families from coming away because it's extraordinarily dangerous. So yes, all of those people if you if you follow the timeline as well, after the Attorney General made his announcement, we spent a month looking through trying to make sure that we would do it and enforce the law. In the most compassionate way possible. And what I mean by that is, if you had children under five, the policy was we would not refer you to prosecution. Despite the fact that you had broken the law and despite. But we know now that children under 5 were in fact separated from their families. Some of them were. If you look through the court cases, though, there's other reasons why families are separated. If the Adults accompany them is not a parent. And fortunately, we saw a tremendous increase in fake families of adults, unfortunately. But you and I both know that the number of fraudulent families as they're classified are statistically insignificant. That's incorrect. I'm crossing- That's incorrect. What's the percentage of fraud? It's over 500 families and out of the 49, 000 children that HHS had in its care that were unaccompanied, they're under 2, 000 Or because of the fact that their parents chose to break the law. The [ INAUDIBLE ] sector just released numbers that showed of the families that they found to be fragile and it's less than one percent of all the families crossing at that time. But that's one of 90 Board of [ INAUDIBLE ] .- And is one of the most highly traffic sectors. Right so, when percent still is .- At the same time, how fair is it to hold up a statistical insignifficant number. As a priority for you? Why does it justify, why does that justify family .- Well, because I think if we, it's not about justifying, my point is that what we need to be focused on together, is trying to stop .- All of this horror of these families coming in this way. We don't want them to have to go to a smuggler or a trafficker. I guess what I'm saying is one woman who's raped, one child who is exploited is too many. So the system needs to be changed so that they don't have to come that way, which is why among many other things I proposed legislation to Congress to allow families and individuals to claim asylum before they ever get to the United States so that they don't have to take this journey which is so horrible. Do people ever specifically raised you the concern that children will be traumatized as a result of this policy. Not during that. Not directly to you, you've never heard those concerns? Not from staff. No. I mean, I think it from the biggest. Child Welfare experts, anyone outside the government. From the biggest. This was nothing new to be clear. So from a staff perspective, I think, you know, there was this belief that to not enforce the law would encourage trafficking would encourage child to be Chuck, children to be used as pawns. And he law enforcement officials had taken an oath which is why the operational entities recommended that we choose to enforce the law. We never forced it 100 %, if you had two parents coming across, we chose specifically not to refer both parents so that one parent could stay with the children. As I said, we did try to limit as much as possible in a tender age situation. But it wasn't it clearly wasn't working. So we stopped it during an executive order. And we have been hopeful that Congress will look at this and really take very seriously. What is the best way to do this? I mean, the debate the debate is very false. We don't have to choose. Between protecting vulnerable populations and securing a border. That's a false choice. We don't have to choose between keeping out opioids and facilitating trade. We can do all of these things at the same time but they do require changes to the laws. So that's what I hope we can all come together to work on, because none of these things should even be. Let me ask you About it. We have to. Some of your public defenses of the policy at the time in June of 2018 you went out to the White House press briefing room. And you said very clearly administration did not create a policy of separating families. That same month, DHS released numbers that said over 2000 children had been separated from their parents at the border. So why did you say what you did? So if a family comes to a legal point of entry, I specifically chose, when asked if I would do otherwise not to separate that family. Because they hadn't broken any laws. There was no need to separate them, in my opinion. I'm asking about the families that are separeted? And I'm telling you why it's not a policy. So interior under my watch, we didn't separate families in the interior, we didn't separate them at legal parts of entry and as I already mentioned if you had two parents we did not refer both to prosecution. So the policy was not to separate, the policy was to enforce the law as a law enforcement agency by the way a lot of it we didn't pass, [ INAUDIBLE ] we tried to work with congress To change and make more sense given the flows, but it's not a policy I do want to make clear. You say you are enforcing the law that is a significant change from the way the law was previously enforced. So that is a big policy shift, at the very least So under previous administrations, they also enforced this exact law. What was different is the numbers of people have greatly increased over the last few years. And as I mentioned, the number of families have increased over the last few years. But no, this is a law that was enforced in exactly the same way in previous administrations, the numbers just aren't the same. [ CROSSTALK ] officials from the previous administration I've spoken to have said that they Always veered on the interest, of the best interest of the child. That only if there was an immediate harm to the child, would they choose to separate. And that's why we did not see thousands of children, as we saw with this administration out there. Though we didn't see thousands of children because there weren't thousands of families. So, it's what I'm trying to tell you, that the flow is very different. But actually long standing CBP policy has been as you're describing, to only separate when there is an issue that favors the child is separate. So there's a communicable disease. There's a credit history of the parent, the parent is not the parent. There's clear abuse or if the parent has to go to a custodial location If any parent in this room. When you say a custodial location, Yeah. You made the decision to prosecute, which was a policy change from DHS and I want to be clear about that. Yeah, I understand but the change. And that relating to past administration. The change was rather than enforcing the law, the change was let's enforce the law with the retards. That's what the Attorney General said. Let's not exempt any group of people. Let's encourage everyone to go to ports of entry and come here legally. It is the law. Let's enforce the law our law enforcement agencies. You testified before Congress about this policy as well in May of 2019. And you said that no parents were deported without the chance to reunite. With their children. We now know that hundreds of parents were deported without their children. Why did you say what you said? Yeah so that's ongoing litigation. As I understand it, what the judge found is, as is practiced, not only does CBP ask, or ICE in that case ask the parent, But we deport someone or someone is deported which by the way is not a decision DHS makes. That's the Department of Justice decision. The parents are asked if they want to bring their children with them. And in many many cases for a variety of reasons they don't want to bring their children with them. They would prefer to leave the children in the United States. So, many parents left without their children as part of that. Case, the judge issued the orders, asked that we go back again to the parents find them wherever they had gone home to. And ask again, do you want your children with you? And in many cases then they said no, they wanted their children in the United States. Now, Were you aware when you testified that hundreds of parents had been deported without their kids? I still not sure that's an accurate fact. Because it's not what the judge has found. So they were deported without their children, but with their complete knowledge. Let me ask you about the federal government's ongoing efforts to reunite some of those children who were separated. There's now a new report out on Friday, a government official said that the judge overseeing the effort to reunite them The federal government could have separated additional, almost 1300 children before this policy was ever officially put into place. So am going to ask you what do you think the US government responsibility should be to make sure that all of those children are reunitedwith their parents? It is every possible method possible Imean there is, there shouldn't The law is difficult because when HHS, HHS is the agency cares for the children, not DHS, it's HHS. But HHS under law has to find a sponsor for the child, that's What they're required to do. What we need to do is understand when a parent is present in the United States, we need to first and foremost reunite the child with that parent assuming that's what both the parent and the child want, as opposed to trying to find another sponsor. There's differences in a lot too if you're from Mexico. And you don't have any parents here, we have the legal right to work with the consulate to send you back to your family in Mexico. If you're from other countries we don't have that ability, you can't send the children home, they have to be placed with a sponsor in the United States. So, we should do everything possible, I mean there's no question there. To be clear the US government is currently not doing everything possible to [ INAUDIBLE ] immigration groups and [ INAUDIBLE ] non- profits. I'm not in the government right now, but I'm also not part of health and human services. You are part of the administration right now, right? You did accept a position on the advisory council. I'm not with the administration right now. The White House put out a press release saying you had rejoined. No, what the White House did was say that They had asked me as an expert in critical infrastructure and cyber security to join CEOs throughout the country. As part of an advisory council. None of us are paid. None of us work for the White House. We use our expertise to try to advise government. On what we need to do in cyber and [ UNKNOWN ]. You're currently advising the White House. Can I ask what led you to resign? And by the way, so are other CEOs though. I mean, are you telling every CEO in here that they should never advise the government on how to make something work? [ APPLAUSE ] I'm interviewing you right now. So I'm asking you before we turn to questions what led you to resign from this administration? What led me to resign is there were a lot of things that there were those administration he thought that we should do and just as I spoke truth to power from the very beginning, it became clear that saying no and refusing to do it myself was not gonna be enough. So it was time for me to offer my resignation. That's what I did. Secretary Nelson, thank you for taking the time to answer the questions. No problem. I wish we had gotten to cyber because that's why I was originally here, it was for a cyber panel. So let me just quickly say it's Cyber Awareness Month. Cyber is the biggest threat that we face in the Homeland today. It does take each of us to do our part, it's a weakest link problem. Third Party risk is the biggest thing we face. And as we move towards elections, the only thing I want to say quickly is remember, if you go to vote, and for any reason you are not on the voter database, you are guaranteed by right of provisional ballot. Please use it. [ APPLAUSE ] That is our time. I apologize we don't have time for the audience. Thank you very much. Thank you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Kirstjen Nielsen Reflects on Signing the Controversial Detention Migrant Policy

Kirstjen Nielsen Reflects on Signing the Controversial Detention Migrant Policy