Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says removing Confederate statues is a matter of public safety and homeland security. (Screen grab from ABC's "This Week")

(CNSNews.com) – Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Sunday that removing Confederate statues from public land is not a matter of political correctness.

“That's a matter of public safety and homeland security and doing what's right,” Johnson told ABC’s “This Week” with Martha Raddatz.

“President Trump said this week that Jefferson and Washington were slave owners, where does it stop? Where does it end?” Johnson asked.

He answered his own question:

I think most Americans understand -- most African-Americans understand that many of the founders of our nation were slave owners. But most of us are not advocating that we take them off the currency or drop Washington's name from the nation's capital. I have first cousins -- I have cousins whose names are Washington and they're not changing their names. They're proud of their name. What alarms so many of us, from a security perspective, is that so many of the statues, the Confederate monuments, are now, modern-day, becoming symbols and rallying points for white nationalism, for neo-Nazis, for the KKK. And this is most alarming. We fought a world war against Nazism. The KKK rained terror on African-Americans for generations. And so a number of Americans, rightly, Republican and Democrat, are very concerned and very alarmed. And I salute those in cities and states who are taking down a lot of these monuments for reasons of public safety and security. And that's not a matter of political correctness. That's a matter of public safety and homeland security and doing what's right.

Johnson said the removal of statues and the renaming of roads and schools is a decision that should be made at the local level.

“And so communities have to make judgments about this. A lot of these monuments are being moved to places of history, but my concern, as the former secretary of Homeland Security, is we see white nationalists now, neo-Nazis, using these symbols as rallying points, modern-day.

“And that has to be addressed. We saw what happened in Charlottesville. And we have to avoid repeat occurrences of that.”