John Locher / AP
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., speaks at the Battle Born Progress Progressive Summit, Saturday, Jan. 12, 2019, in North Las Vegas.
Tuesday, July 2, 2019 | 8:30 p.m.
Sen. Jacky Rosen put the brakes on two of President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security nominees until conditions along the Southern border, particularly concerning the care of migrant children, are remedied.
“You have to look no further than some of the photos you’re seeing on television,” she told the Sun Monday. “You’re seeing children in cages, they’re not being fed adequately, they’re not being cared for.”
The nominations of Chad F. Wolf for secretary for strategy and policy, and Troy D. Edgar for chief financial officer are postponed, according to Rosen, who is a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. She placed this hold Friday before leaving for a nine-day recess. The Senate will reconvene next Monday.
“I put a hold on those nominations for the time being until we get some answers from the Department of Homeland Security,” she said. “Specifically with the children in custody and what remedies we’re going to do to fix it and what we’re going to do to ensure this never happens again.”
Any senator can place a hold on any nominee, according to Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs officials. This prevents a nominee from being approved by unanimous consent. If a nominee cannot be approved unanimously, the nomination would require a roll call vote on the Senate floor.
Rosen's committee oversees the hearing and confirmation process of executive nominations to the Homeland Security Department.
Earlier this year, Rosen grilled Wolf over his involvement with the Trump administration's immigration policies while he was chief of staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Last week, the Associated Press reported that 250 infants, children and teens were being locked up for weeks at a time without adequate food, water or sanitation at a border patrol facility in Texas. The law calls for children to be held by U.S. Border Patrol for no longer than 72 before transferred over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Frankly, how we are separating families, especially how we are treating helpless children, is beyond unacceptable,” Rosen said. “As a parent, that’s unacceptable for me to think about those children and the permanent damage it’s going to do to them, living in those conditions.”
In a statement, Rosen said she would maintain the nomination holds until a non-governmental third party certifies that the DHS has complied with improving the conditions.
Rosen said the conditions at the detention centers were “dehumanizing” and are not not “true to our American values.”
“I think people have different views of what they think about concentration camps but I can tell you this: In the same way that concentration camps wanted to dehumanize classes of individuals for their political gain, that’s what’s happening here,” she said.
