Jeh Johnson: On his grandfather and the costs of overheated rhetoric

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, decrying the tenor of the immigration debate today, offers a personal perspective on the costs and consequences of political rhetoric taken too far.

His grandfather, Charles Johnson, then president of Fisk University, was called before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee in 1949 to be grilled on allegations that communists had infiltrated predominantly black colleges like his own. It is a story Johnson heard for the first time when he was preparing to deliver the Green Foundation Lecture at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., last month.

His grandfather was "asked to deny if he is or ever has been a member of the Communist Party," Johnson told Capital Download on Tuesday. "He went on to give a very impassioned prepared statement about the loyalty of the American Negro ... and said that we are not disloyal, but we are expecting our country to live up to its promise and its values, which is why we are bringing to light the injustices" — a defiant declaration in the days before the Civil Rights movement.

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At the time, Johnson told a similar investigative committee in California that their inquiries were "much more un-American than the un-American activities being pursued."

His family never told him the story while Jeh Johnson was growing up, and even now his father describes it as an agonizing episode. A good friend speculated at the time that the stress may have contributed to Charles Johnson's unexpected death from a heart attack in 1956, at age 63. His grandson, who bears "Charles" as his middle name, was born two years later.

Johnson, now 58, relates the story as he describes the debate over illegal immigration in the United States as the toughest issue he faces, "laden with all sorts of misinformation and very often misinformation that is repeated and elaborated upon by those who should know better." Immigration has become a heated issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, especially among Republicans. Donald Trump gets cheers at rallies when he promises to build a wall across the Southern border to curtail illegal immigrants from Mexico.

"Those of us in public office and those of us who aspire to public office have a responsibility to be reasonable, fact-based, in our rhetoric and to not suggest things that are unreasonable, to whip up a lot of emotion in public, which can lead to government overreach, fear, suspicions and prejudice," Johnson says, though he declined to discuss any particular candidates. "So the immigration space is a difficult space in which to make policy."

The sprawling Homeland Security Department, with more than 240,000 employees, has responsibility for everything from immigration to counterterrorism, from the Secret Service to hurricane relief. In the interview with USA TODAY's weekly video newsmaker series, Johnson also:

• Said vetting procedures for 10,000 Syrian refugees who are to be resettled in the United States during fiscal year 2016 refugees had been tightened since the influx of Iraqi refugees a few years ago. "We now do a better job of connecting dots, consulting all the right databases and systems that we have available to us," he says. But he acknowledged that the self-proclaimed Islamic State might try to use the influx of refugees as an opportunity to infiltrate the United States. "We have to be concerned about the possibility of a security breach and we are concerned about that, and we're going to vet refugees very carefully."

• Called for "a larger megaphone" to distribute a message countering the social-media appeals by ISIS that have succeeded in enlisting disaffected young people in the United States and elsewhere. "We've made progress in figuring out how to respond, but there's a lot more to do in terms of the actual response," he said. He said tech companies and philanthropies could help distribute a message that counters ISIS' appeal and offers a positive alternative.

• Defended the Black Lives Matter movement for "airing a point of view that deserves to be heard and a frustration that deserves to be heard."