On Friday’s edition of CBS’s “The Takeout,” Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX) responded to a question on whether DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s departure improves the likelihood of reaching a deal to end the DHS shutdown by saying that “we have to see a whole-scale revamping of what the mission and purpose of this agency is.”
Host and CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang asked, “The House has passed a DHS funding bill, but it is dead in the Senate. Do you think there’s a better chance for Congress to reach an agreement on DHS funding now that she is out — or on her way out, I should say?”
Johnson answered, “Well, we’ll see. Kristi Noem was a terrible secretary. I’ve called for her impeachment [on] multiple occasions over the year, as a member of the Homeland Security Committee. But it’s also the conduct of the agency. I think we have to see a whole-scale revamping of what the mission and purpose of this agency is. We have to see a complete stoppage of these roaming patrols that are just terrorizing people solely based on racial profiling, abusing the constitutional protections, and just ignoring the rights of the people in this country. And unless we see a wholesale commitment to withdraw from all of that, I don’t see anything changing. If this new person is going to step in and keep business as usual, then it doesn’t really matter. So, we’re going to have to have some real honest conversations at the family table about what this agency does, what its purpose is going forward, and how it can be completely restructured, because what it’s doing right now is completely unacceptable.”
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