Some of the most accomplished women in the nation are refusing to share a stage with a woman best-known for using her power to torture children.
Award-winning filmmaker Dream Hampton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have backed out of FORTUNE’s Most Powerful Women Summit next weekend, in protest of the three-day event’s inclusion of Kirstjen Nielsen, former Secretary of Homeland Security under Donald Trump.
The news was first reported by Slate on Friday and confirmed by HuffPost. Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill cited a scheduling conflict.
But a source familiar with the decision told HuffPost that Nielsen’s inclusion was the reason the former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate withdrew. FORTUNE did not immediately return a request for comment.
Hampton issued a scathing statement condemning Nielsen’s participation in the summit, warning that these heinous atrocities against humanity shouldn’t be normalized.
“FORTUNE should not be giving Kirstjen Nielsen a platform to rehabilitate her image,” Hampton said.
“I’ve worked all my life to tell the stories of women, girls and families. Sharing a stage with Nielsen, who separated immigrant families and put babies in cages, would have put a stamp of approval on her immoral and reprehensible actions and help legitimize the terror that Trump is inflicting on immigrants and communities of color.”
Nielsen, of course, unforgettably implemented, and then defended the Trump administration’s child-caging and family separation immigration policies—and the long-lasting trauma it inflicted upon thousands of children and their families.
Nielsen did not create Trump’s monstrous policy of separating migrant families, but she should be known forever as the person who carried it out. She put babies in cages, traumatized children for life, and then appears to have lied to Congress about what she had done. She did this evil work with either blithe incompetence or malicious sloppiness, failing to create a system to properly track kids who were ripped from their families. On Friday, the Trump administration said it could take up to two years to identify thousands of separated migrant children.
Nielsen shouldn’t be honored as a “most powerful” anything in our society; she’s a monster, who helped the demon in the White House torture immigrant children and their families. This isn’t the rightfully-disgraced baby-cager’s first attempt at rehabilitating her image since her April resignation from DHS: Just last month, the Atlantic faced harsh criticisms for inviting Nielsen to participate in their annual festival. Ultimately, in one of the only semi-decent things the ex-destroyer of families has done since joining the Trump administration, Nielsen opted to cancel her appearance.
There’s only one question remaining: Will others scheduled to participate in this forum soon follow the lead of Hampton and Clinton, or will FORTUNE step in before the event loses any more powerful guests from the lineup? Nielsen’s media tour is an obvious effort to erase the evil she’s done, and such a campaign must not be allowed to succeed. Instead, a strong message must never stop being sent to her and her ilk: Dehumanizing and torturing human beings is never acceptable and will never be forgiven.