President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be the next Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary, Kristi Noem, got into a tense exchange with Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal (D) during her Senate confirmation hearing on Friday.
The episode took place when Blumenthal, the last Senator to interrogate Noem during the almost two-and-a-half-hour session, asked the South Dakota Governor if she would commit to helping children who were victims of the so-called "Family Separation Policy" in the last administration reunite with their families.
"Senator, the Trump administration never had a family separation policy," Noem responded defiantly. "They had a zero tolerance policy which said that our laws would be followed." Noem then took the conversation into another direction:
"What I am alarmed by is the over 300,000 children that went missing during the Biden administration. And when we talk about children and what they're potentially facing in regards to victimization in this country and the trafficking that's going on. This administration's lack of desire to find where those children are, what they may be going through is alarming to me"
Blumenthal then interrupted Noem, claiming his time was expiring to ask that they "put aside what happened in the past" to which Noem quipped back saying "I can't put aside 340,000 children."
Noem was apparently referring to a report released by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general's office back in August which found that not only had 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to show up for court dates at immigration courts from 2019 to 2023, but that 291,000 migrant children received no court notices at all.
According to some experts, such as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, the figures are indicative of a bureaucratic "paperwork issue" rather than "anything nefarious" as "the government has not made any effort to find these children."
Nevertheless, Donald Trump claimed during the campaign trail that the Biden administration couldn't find the more than 300,000 migrant children, going as far as to say they were "now slaves, sex slaves or dead" in an interview with Time magazine in December. Coincidently, it was Homan who was the man behind the so-called "family separation policy" during Trump's first term.
After the tense exchange, Blumenthal did his best to bring the questioning back on track. "There are still 1,000 children who are separated and waiting to be reunited," said the Senator, adding that he would like Noem's commitment to continue the effort to reunite them with their family.
"Senator, keeping families together is critically important to me and to this country," said Noem. "I'm concerned about Laken Riley's family, that they no longer have her. I'm concerned about the fact that we have people in this country that don't know where their children are, or people in other countries who sent their children here and have been lost by this administration."
"I'm gonna end in an optimistic note and say I'll take that as a yes," concluded Senator Blumenthal, jokingly.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: "Will you help me reunite children with their parents who were separated by Trump's family separation policy?"
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) January 17, 2025
KRISTI NOEM: "What I'm alarmed by is the over 300,000 children that went missing during the Biden administration."
BLUMENTHAL: "Let's put aside the... pic.twitter.com/j13huXJTjE
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