Tuesday evening, a group of protesters interrupted Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s dinner at a Mexican restaurant in downtown DC with chants and jeers.
They approached Nielsen at MXDC Cocina Mexicana, where Nielsen was having dinner two days after a disastrous press conference at the White House.
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Nielsen’s DHS is responsible for unspeakable cruelty at the border, as families seeking asylum in the US have been detained and separated by the thousands. Most recent reports have revealed that children—including babies and toddlers—have been ripped from their parents and kept in cages.
The protesters led several chants of “Shame” and “Abolish ICE” and shouted questions at Nielsen:
“How do you sleep at night?”
“Aren’t you a mother, too?”
“Do you hear the babies crying?”
“If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace.”
“The irony isn’t lost on us that this is a Mexican restaurant,” the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America, the group claiming responsibility for organizing the protest, wrote in a Facebook live video. “Nielsen has led the program to tear apart families. We are here to tell her to put an end to separating families, to step down as head of the department, and that ICE and CBP must be abolished #abolishICE #abolishCBP”
“Secretary Nielsen, how dare you spend your evening eating dinner as you’re complicit in the separation and deportation of over 10 thousand children separated from their parents,” a person leading chants said over the restaurant crowd.
She sat through the demonstration for about 10 minutes, then left with her security detail:
DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton tweeted following the demonstration:
As reports shed more and more light on the human rights tragedy unfolding at the border, the DHS and Nielsen have relied on a “just following orders” approach when pressured to take any responsibility. When asked if separating families at the border is cruel, at a press conference this week, she said, “Our policy at DHS is to do what we’re sworn to do, which is to enforce the law.”