In Testy Hearing, Dems Tell Noem to Resign

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defiantly defended the Trump administration's hardline immigration policies on Thursday during an annual House committee hearing, portraying migrants as a major threat faced by the nation that justifies a crackdown that has seen widespread arrests, deportations, and a dizzying pace of restrictions on foreigners.

• Noem, who heads the agency central to President Trump's approach to immigration, received backup from Republicans on the panel but fierce questioning from Democrats who called for her resignation, the AP reports. The secretary, whose testimony was interrupted by protesters calling for an end to deportations, vowed she "would not back down."

• Testifying in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security to discuss "Worldwide Threats to the Homeland," Noem emphasized in her remarks how big a role she believed immigration played in those threats to the country. Her remarks, and the Democrats' questioning, focused heavily on immigration policies, whereas in years past the hearing has centered on issues such as cybersecurity, terrorism, China, and border security. "What keeps me up at night is that we don't necessarily know all of the people that are in this country, who they are and what their intentions are," Noem said. She said that was why Trump's administration was being "so aggressive" in "finding those people who shouldn't be in this country to begin with."
• Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, told Noem that she has diverted vast resources to carry out Trump's "extreme" immigration agenda and failed to provide basic responses to oversight questions from Congress. "I call on you to resign," the Mississippi congressman said. "Do a real service to the country."
• Noem did not address Thompson's call during her opening statement but suggested that she and the department she runs weren't going anywhere. "We will never yield. We will never waver, and we will never back down," she said. She praised the Trump administration's efforts when it comes to immigration, saying, "We're ending illegal immigration, returning sanity to our immigration system."

• The hearing offered lawmakers a rare opportunity to hear directly from Noem, but many members of the panel used the bulk of their allotted time to either praise or lambast her handling of immigration enforcement rather than ask questions designed to elicit expansive and illuminating responses, the AP reports.
• In one exchange, Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Democrat, asked Noem how many veterans she had deported. After she denied that veterans had been deported, Magaziner announced that they were being joined via Zoom by a combat veteran who had been deported to South Korea earlier this year, Newsweek reports. "You don't seem to know how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys," Magaziner told Noem, who said she would look into the case.
• Noem left the hearing early, saying she had to attend a FEMA Council meeting. The meeting however, had been canceled, the Hill reports. Thompson, calling Noem a "liar with no respect for congressional oversight," sought to have her called before the committee again, but the move was voted down by Republicans.