Kamala Harris, other Democratic lawmakers call on Kirstjen Nielsen to resign

Sen. Kamala Harris.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) on Monday said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen should step down due to her record of making "misleading statements" about the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy that separates children from their parents at the border.

On Sunday, Nielsen tweeted that the administration does "not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." Harris said that for more than a year, she's been asking for "complete data on the number of children separated and what training and protocol exists for carrying out such separations. In response, the leadership of the department has routinely failed to provide complete answers to questions from me and my colleagues." The Department of Homeland Security "should have a commitment to transparency and accountability," Harris continued, but under Nielsen, it "has a track record of neither."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.