Transportation secretary Elaine Chao got visibly angry with protesters when they confronted her and her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), over immigrant family separations at the border.
In a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday by someone involved with the confrontation, a group of people can be seen approaching the couple as they leave an event at Georgetown and head into a car.
“Why don’t you leave my husband alone?” Chao said in a heated tone at least three times as she walked up to them.
Chao was apparently set off by the crowd’s angry questions for McConnell, who ultimately decides which of the proposals addressing family detentions will be put to a vote on the Senate floor.
“Why are you separating families?” they pressed while playing the widely heard audio of separated children crying.
“How does he sleep at night?” some in the crowd asked.
The confrontation comes as tensions between the Trump administration and its opponents have materialized into in-person encounters.
Last Saturday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, after the owner heard she was dining there. The owner said she felt the restaurant had “certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty and compassion and cooperation.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was also confronted by activists last week chanting “Shame” and “Sanctuary for all” when she was spotted dining at a Mexican restaurant.