Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson Rips GOP Campaign Rhetoric as Dangerous and 'Overly Simplistic'

— -- The nation’s homeland security chief today denounced some of the 2016 presidential campaign’s rhetoric as “overly simplistic” and “counter to our national security interest.”

Speaking at a symposium in Washington, D.C., focused on countering violent extremism, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson took aim at recent remarks like those by Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz calling for surveillance of Muslim communities in the United States.

Cruz said in a statement after last month’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, that “we need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

And late last year, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”

But at today’s symposium, sponsored by the International Peace and Security Institute, Johnson said, “contrary to some of the political rhetoric” and “contrary to some of the overly simplistic rhetoric,” there is “no one neighborhood or ghetto or city that one could circle … to surveil American Muslims.”

President Obama recently echoed that sentiment, calling some of the Republican campaign language “un-American” and “counterproductive.”

“The overwhelming, overwhelming majority of American Muslims, including those who serve in our United States military … are patriotic, dedicated people who love this country and want to help us with public safety and secure our homeland, because they know it’s their homeland too,” Johnson said today. “Efforts to vilify and isolate American Muslims are counter to our homeland security interest and counter to our national security interest, given the nature of the global terrorist threat.”

Emphasizing the need to build bridges with U.S. Muslims, Johnson noted that Islam is “as diverse as Christianity,” with different kinds of followers scattered in different places around the world.

But Johnson acknowledged that U.S. authorities must focus their efforts in stopping the terrorist threat. And while law enforcement is not targeting a religion or a specific group, he said, there are “several caveats to that.”“The Islamic State, which is the most visible and most prominent and probably the most dangerous terrorist organization that we face right now, is targeting American Muslims,” Johnson said. “So we must respond in countering that effort as a matter of homeland security, which is why when I talk about building bridges to communities, most often I am in fact talking about building bridges to American Muslim communities – because that is who the Islamic State is targeting.”

Today’s remarks are not the first time Johnson has taken issue with comments emanating from the 2016 presidential race. Last summer, he pushed back on Trump’s broad plan to deport undocumented immigrants from the United States.

“I’m not in the business of giving advice to candidates for president but … the facts are that apprehensions [along the Southwest border] have gone way down,” Johnson said in July. “We’ve invested a lot in border security. We are much better at border security than we used to be, and the undocumented population in this country has stopped growing.”

More than half of the undocumented population has been in the United States more than 10 years, and, “No administration is going to deport them because [we] don’t have the resources to do that,” Johnson said at the time.