Since Alex Pretti’s killing three weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been trying to distance herself from Minneapolis—politically and geographically. Last week, Noem went to southern Arizona to give a speech about border-wall construction. Yesterday, she was at a warehouse along the border in California, straining to tout the Trump administration’s drug-seizure data above the clamor of protesters outside. Noem returned to Arizona today to promote President Trump’s proposed election legislation, describing voting in the swing state as “an absolute disaster.”
Trump made clear that Noem’s approach to carrying out mass deportations had become a liability when he sent Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” to take over in Minnesota. Homan’s job was to defuse anger and remediate the political debacle that Noem and her team created when federal agents killed two U.S. citizens, detained young children, and triggered daily scenes of mayhem, corroding Trump’s approval ratings on what he has long viewed as his strongest issue.
In public, Trump has continued to praise Noem and shrug off calls for her resignation. But White House officials have privately grown frustrated with her performance, as Republican midterm strategists raise alarms about the political damage. One person familiar with the discussions told us that Noem’s position is no longer secure, even though the president has not yet moved against her.
Democrats, angered by the lawlessness of the crackdown and emboldened by Trump’s sinking poll numbers, are demanding more concessions on immigration enforcement from the administration. They are poised to shut down DHS this weekend, absent a deal to rein in the conduct of ICE officers.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem have ensured the most secure border in our Nation’s history and our homeland is undoubtedly safer today than it was when the President took office last year,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told us in a statement. “The President continues to have full confidence in the Secretary.”
The shutdown will hinder Noem’s efforts to pivot away from Minneapolis. Her team has already canceled her upcoming travel plans to New Orleans, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and other destinations because the travel is not considered mandatory, three officials told us. They, like others we interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
In the short term, Democratic calls for Noem’s removal may help her keep the job, if only temporarily, because Trump doesn’t want to reward such attacks. The president’s loyalty to Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s early campaign manager who functions as Noem’s de facto chief of staff, is a second reason she has not yet been ousted. Lewandowski is a “special government employee” at DHS with no formal position or salary, and his role running the department on a day-to-day basis has fueled infighting among those tasked with carrying out Trump’s immigration crackdown. The structure of Trump’s team remains unwieldy, with the policy adviser Stephen Miller issuing directives to Noem and Lewandowski.
[Read: Battles are raging inside the Department of Homeland Security ]
And yet, since Pretti’s killing, Homan, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, and other veteran immigration-enforcement officials have gained an upper hand over Noem and Lewandowski for control of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. The DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told us that Homan is in charge in Minneapolis, citing Trump’s social-media posts, but did not say whether he will direct operations elsewhere. On Tuesday, when ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons testified to the House Homeland Security Committee, Democratic Representative Tim Kennedy asked him whether Noem should resign. Lyons didn’t defend her. “I’m not going to comment on that, sir,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy article yesterday citing anonymous officials who described Noem and Lewandowski’s chaotic tenure at DHS, including a long-rumored extramarital affair that both have denied. Noem, among other alleged excesses, attempted to fire a Coast Guard pilot who forgot to bring her blanket aboard a DHS flight, the Journal reported, and has complained to staff that Homan eclipses her in television appearances. Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate staff, dismiss the expertise of career law-enforcement officials, and fly around the country on a luxury jet with a private rear cabin that is supposed to be used for deportations, according to the Journal. A spokesperson for DHS disputed the claims.
As word spread this week that Noem was headed to the Phoenix area for an election-related news conference, state and local election officials, along with the attorneys who represent them, grew apprehensive. Just two weeks ago, FBI agents had seized election material from the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County. They worried that something similar could happen in Maricopa County, which was central to Trump’s loss in 2020. Online, Republicans who regularly spread misinformation about that defeat raised expectations of a “Georgia-like event.” The suspense grew when reporters who wanted to attend the news conference—including one of us—were driven in a convoy of about a dozen unmarked vehicles from an ICE field office in Phoenix to a Homeland Security Investigations office 30 minutes away, racing up the freeway during rush hour at more than 75 miles an hour in SUVs driven by federal authorities wearing tactical gear. (On the way there, a driver said that he was on the lookout for signs that bad actors were following us.)
The news conference did not live up to the hype.
When Noem appeared—40 minutes late—she gave a long and rather dry lecture on one of Trump’s favorite themes: questioning the integrity of the nation’s elections. She cited rare instances of voting by noncitizens in other states, and spoke in favor of GOP-backed legislation that election experts have said would disenfranchise millions of voters. (Among other things, the SAVE America Act would require people to use birth certificates or passports to prove that they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote in federal elections.) Noem said it was important that the nation’s election equipment—which is considered critical infrastructure that her agency is responsible for securing—is reliable and trustworthy.
[Read: ‘The trust has been totally destroyed’]
“I hope that you do recognize that, in the past, your state has been an absolute disaster on elections,” she told her Arizona audience. “That your leaders have failed you dramatically by not having systems that work, by disenfranchising Americans who wanted to vote. They had to stand in lines for hours because machines failed or software failed. There’s no state that could use more improvement than Arizona.” (In 2016, the inadequate number of voting locations in Maricopa County led to long lines, and in 2022, printers that produced ballots failed at dozens of locations around the county.)
As she spoke, Lewandowski stayed mostly hidden, occasionally peeking out from behind a wall.
A DHS shutdown won’t make much difference to Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the president signed in July included $170 billion for immigration enforcement, a sum approaching three times the annual DHS budget. ICE alone got $75 billion of supplemental funding, including $30 billion for operations. DHS could essentially remain shut down for the rest of Trump’s term, and the agency would still see a net funding increase. But other parts of the department, including the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office and significant parts of the cybersecurity and election-infrastructure offices, face furloughs, according to a person briefed on the plans. Transportation Security Administration officers, who screen passengers at airports, will work without pay.
Lewandowski and Noem have frustrated career officials at DHS with a policy implemented last summer that requires Noem’s signature on any contract worth more than $100,000. The requirement has been a source of infighting and finger-pointing. Noem’s team blames career DHS officials for moving too slowly, and they say that she’s added an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy that has hampered border-wall construction and the expansion of ICE’s detention capacity.
[Read: Why Trump loves mega-prisons]
Although the administration has quietly wrapped up its operation in Minnesota, it is not abandoning its push to increase deportations. Officials in New Hampshire published an ICE memo today that outlines the agency’s $38.3 billion plan to construct eight “large-scale detention sites” across the country with capacity for up to 10,000 detainees, along with 16 processing sites. The memo describes a “new detention model” the agency aims to build over the next seven months by converting warehouse sites into windowless mega-jails. According to the memo, ICE plans to phase out contracts with for-profit detention companies in favor of acquiring, renovating, and building its own sites, including some in Democrat-run states with large immigrant populations but relatively little ICE infrastructure.
ICE, which had 39,000 detainees in custody when Trump took office, said that its “detention reengineering initiative” will provide capacity to hold more than 92,000 people in its warehouses.
At today’s news conference, we asked Noem whether she was still in charge of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. The secretary smiled before quickly replying, “I’m still in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.”
