Kristi Noem Fired as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

What Happened?

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem was fired by President Trump yesterday.

He also posted on social media that the former Secretary of DHS ‘will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.’ Further details on the Shield of The Americas initiative are expected to be announced Friday afternoon.

After firing Ms. Noem, President Trump nominated U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to take over as the new Secretary of DHS. Senator Mullin will have to be confirmed by the Senate in order to permanently take up the post.

Why it Matters

Noem’s tenure as head of DHS has been controversial from the beginning, but recent comments made by Republicans during Congressional hearings likely sealed her political fate. Specifically, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, called Ms. Noem a ‘disaster’ as the leader of DHS.

The controversy over her leadership of DHS also reached a peak during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens. Those deaths generated a nationwide outcry against DHS and specifically against Ms. Noem.

Adding to the controversy were allegations that Ms. Noem approved two hundred million in advertising to firms led by her personal friends. Ms. Noem has denied any wrongdoing, but President Trump has said he did not approve of any such funding for DHS. At least one member of Congress has called for Ms. Noem to be investigated for perjury during her testimony to Congressional investigators.

DHS was created by President George W. Bush shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in order to better coordinate and combine several federal security and intelligence agencies into a single cohesive organization.

But DHS has struggled since its founding to achieve that goal, because most of the agencies under the organizational umbrella have continued to operate as they always had. As a result, DHS has always been a basket case of a federal agency, with a huge budget and large workforce, but one that has underachieved in terms of strategic results.

Kristi Noem inherited DHS with a mandate to speed up deportations and more aggressively enforce the immigration policies of the Trump Administration. And she also benefited from an enormous budget increase for DHS, which had just been passed by Congress when she took on the role of secretary.

But the results were not good. Not only did deportations still fall below those of the Obama Administration, but according to Reuters, federal judges found that under Noem’s leadership, DHS violated court orders over four thousand times in a single year.

How it Affects You

The Trump Administration has given no indications that removing Noem from office will result in any changes to policies when it comes to immigration. Neither Ms. Noem nor Mr. Mullin had any experience running large federal agencies prior to their nomination, and the lack of government experience could hurt Mr. Mullin as much as it did Ms. Noem.