Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem attends a House Judiciary Committee hearing on "Oversight of the Department of Homeland Security" to testify, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on March 4, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Dozens and dozens of Department of Homeland Security insiders dished out damning details about Kristi Noem's chaotic tenure as the agency's top official.
The 54-year-old Noem was fired last month by President Donald Trump after she told lawmakers he had signed off on a $220 million self-promotional ad campaign and fumbled on questions about her alleged sexual relationship with DHS employee Corey Lewandowski, and agency insiders told the New York Times about similar examples of her self-aggrandizing leadership.
"At Secretary Noem’s first DHS town hall, she came out onstage to the theme song 'Hot Mama,' spoke for maybe a few minutes and took no questions and left," said Jason Marks, former supervisory refugee officer at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. "I wasn’t in the room, but it was something everyone was talking about in real time. It felt like a 'South Park' moment."
Noem had faced intense scrutiny since the administration surged Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers into the Minneapolis area, where agents shot and killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who she slurred as domestic terrorists.
"The Good shooting was cleared by Secretary Noem like within an hour," said one senior ICE agent. "There should be a real investigation. For lesser-trained officers, that made them think, okay, we can push the limits. You could really see that in the field in the lack of professionalism. ICE was giving us big cans of pepper spray we were never issued before. I know that if I spray someone, that’s a use-of-force incident that needs to be investigated. But all these new people were emptying out their canisters, driving by and spraying the crowd — no questions asked."
Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's sweeping immigration crackdown, set a target at the start of his second term of 3,000 arrests a day at minimum and a million deportations in 2025, and DHS insiders described how Miller and Noem issued that directive to the officials expected to carry out those orders.
"Todd Lyons, the ICE director, introduced the secretary," said one former ICE senior executive. "She says to us, If I get fired in six months, I’m going to make sure you get fired in six months, and I’m like, Hold on a second. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, and you just got six months under your belt. You should get fired because you don’t know how to run the mission."
"Then Stephen Miller goes up next, and he chastises our director," the former senior executive added. "He dresses him down in front of us. And I’m like, This is so unprofessional. A field office director says: We’re working through the list, but we’re having some challenges with the list. We’re going to get it done. We’re trying our hardest."
Miller then looked at Lyons and demanded to know how he was issuing the command.
"What are you telling your people?" Miller said, according to the former ICE executive. "I told you — there is no list. Everyone is fair game."
"Once that happened, I knew it was time for me to go," that former official said. "When he said, There is no list; you’ve just got to go and get them — well, define 'them.' How do I know who 'they' are? I’m brown, so what, you’re just going to approach every brown person and ask them what their citizenship is?"
