Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said she stands by her remarks from earlier this week in which she called acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli a white supremacist.
Wasserman Schultz’s comments came during a House Oversight and Reform subcommittee hearing Wednesday regarding USCIS’s decision to stop allowing undocumented immigrants with serious medical conditions to remain in the U.S. while they received treatment, a decision that has since been reversed.
{mosads}”You and Mr. Trump don’t want anyone who looks or talks differently than Caucasian Americans to be allowed into this country,” Wasserman Schultz said to Cuccinelli, according to CNN.
Cuccinelli denied the accusation, but the Florida congresswoman wasn’t finished.
“You want to block all immigration and make life harder for immigrants, and you have demonstrated that you will pursue this heinous white supremacist ideology at all costs, even if it means making critically ill children your collateral damage in the process, and this goes to a comprehensive pattern of harm at the USCIS under your leadership,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Cuccinelli pushed back against the congresswoman’s claims while on Fox News Friday morning.
“I’m under oath and she is literally protected to lie,” Cuccinelli said, adding that the accusations against him and President Trump were “completely false.”
When asked by CNN’s Jim Sciutto about Wednesday’s confrontation and Cuccinelli’s Fox News comments, Wasserman Schultz answered: “Ken Cuccinelli is the tip of the spear of a white supremacist ideology that is the thread of the president’s immigration policy targeting people of color.”
“I used my ability, as a member of the Oversight Committee, to call that out,” she continued.
Cuccinelli is reportedly being considered by the White House to serve as the next acting Homeland Security secretary.