WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, government accountability group Restore Public Trust released the following statement responding to former Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen’s attempt to rehabilitate her public image without demonstrating remorse for her involvement in executing and misleading the public in defense of the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

“Kirstjen Nielsen should be ashamed of her role in the Trump administration’s horrific policy of separating migrant children from their families and putting them in cages. Instead, she defends her actions,” said Karl Frisch, a senior advisor to Restore Public Trust. “She says she left her post in the administration because ‘saying no’ wasn’t enough — but just two weeks ago she accepted another appointment from Trump. On Nielsen’s watch, children taken from their families were abused and sexually assaulted. Some even died. The media should not indulge her desperate attempts to rehabilitate her public image.”

At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, Nielsen said, “it became clear that saying no and refusing it to do it myself was not going to be enough” regarding some unspecified administration policies. On the family separation policy, she said, “I don’t regret enforcing the law because I took an oath to do that, as did everybody at the Department of Homeland Security…What I regret is that that information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families was clearly not in place.”

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