The Legacy of Kristi Noem and the Future of the Department of Homeland Security
March 10, 2026
Jack Zhou
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March 10, 2026
Jack Zhou
On March 5, 2026, President Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem via Truth Social, making her the first Cabinet secretary to leave his second administration. In her place, Trump nominated Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, effective March 31. Noem's departure followed 13 turbulent months at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security — a tenure defined by huge deportation numbers, a $220 million ad campaign that featured her prominently, and the fatal shootings of two American citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. The firing is as much a referendum on Trump's immigration agenda as it is on Noem herself.
Noem arrived at DHS as one of Trump's most loyal allies and a natural fit for his media-driven style of governance. A former two-term governor of South Dakota, she quickly transformed the department into a propaganda engine for the administration's immigration crackdown. She posted aggressively on social media and visited El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison — the maximum-security facility where Venezuelan deportees were held — to film warning videos. She joined ICE operations on the ground in New York City and oversaw historic deportation numbers, with DHS deporting 605,000 people and reaching record immigration detention numbers. But underneath the bold visuals was a department that many officials were quietly watching unravel.
From early on, concerns mounted about the influence of Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign aide whom Noem brought into DHS as a special government employee. Officials within the department described Lewandowski as reprimanding staff, directing firings, and approving contracts — despite holding a temporary advisory role. Reports later emerged that the recipient of a lucrative DHS advertising subcontract was the husband of a former DHS spokesperson, raising serious conflict-of-interest questions. Together, Noem and Lewandowski cultivated an atmosphere of dysfunction that DHS officials described to CNN as exhausting. "People are tired of their shit," one Homeland Security official said.
The beginning of the end came in January 2026, when ICE and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis fatally shot two American citizens during immigration enforcement operations. Renee Good, a mother of three, was shot on January 7 by an ICE agent after attempting to flee during an operation. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked with veterans, was shot on January 24 while filming enforcement activity and attempting to help a woman who had been knocked to the ground by agents.
What followed was perhaps Noem's most damaging misstep. In the immediate aftermath of both shootings, Noem and other administration officials labeled Good and Pretti "domestic terrorists." Video evidence directly contradicted the administration's accounts — Pretti's firearm, for instance, was not visible until federal agents had already physically restrained him, and was removed seconds before he was shot. Noem also falsely claimed Pretti had "brandished" his weapon. Despite this, she refused to retract or apologize — even when confronted six times in a House Judiciary hearing by Representative Jamie Raskin. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons later testified to Congress that he had no knowledge that either Good or Pretti were domestic terrorists. The shootings triggered days of anti-ICE protests, with Trump dispatching border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis — widely understood as a visible rebuke of Noem's management of the situation.
While Minneapolis eroded Noem's standing within the White House, it was a $220 million taxpayer-funded advertising campaign that ultimately cost her the job. The campaign prominently featured Noem in slickly produced videos — including one shot on horseback in front of Mount Rushmore — urging undocumented immigrants to self-deport. The contract was awarded without a standard competitive bidding process to a firm registered to a political operative in Virginia that was incorporated just 8 to 11 days before receiving the contract, according to reporting from ProPublica and questioning by members of Congress.
When Senator John Kennedy grilled Noem at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 3, Noem testified that Trump had personally approved the campaign. The White House denied this immediately. "POTUS did not sign off on a $220 MILLION dollar ad campaign. Absolutely not," a White House official told NBC News. Trump told Reuters: "I never knew anything about it." A senior administration official said Noem's testimony made Trump "mad as a murder hornet." Kennedy made the situation even more uncomfortable for Noem by emphasizing that she had not bid out the campaign properly, and that Trump was furious. Two days later, she was gone.
Noem had also created an unexpected firestorm just days before the hearings by unilaterally suspending TSA PreCheck during the ongoing partial DHS shutdown — a decision that was reversed within hours, generating national headlines and embarrassing the White House. Combined with the congressional hearings, senior administration officials described her ouster as "long overdue."
Trump's choice of Mullin to replace Noem signals a desire to reset the optics without resetting the policy. Markwayne Mullin, 48, is a first-term senator from Oklahoma, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, and a former professional MMA fighter who went undefeated before entering politics. He built his political career on the back of a family plumbing business — "The Red Rooter" — and was first elected to the House in 2012 before winning a Senate seat in 2022. He is known around the Capitol for carrying a bouncy ball, recruiting members to intense workout sessions, and once challenging Teamsters president Sean O'Brien to a physical fight during a committee hearing in 2023.
Where Noem was a stylistic liability, Mullin is a political asset — or at least that is the calculation. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has described him as a "Senate whisperer" for Trump, someone who effectively bridges the gap between the White House and the legislative branch. Trump has reportedly loved watching Mullin perform in cable news interviews, and aides say that affinity played a role in his selection. At a moment when DHS desperately needs to pass a funding bill and restore bipartisan credibility, Mullin's congressional relationships — and his track record as the only Native American in the Senate — could ease some of the friction.
Mullin's potential confirmation as DHS secretary raises an important question: will anything substantively change? Immigration experts and Democratic lawmakers largely say no. Trump's immigration policy is largely driven by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — not any Cabinet secretary — and Mullin has given no indication he would deviate from the administration's direction. As one immigration activist put it: "This is not accountability, just a reshuffling of the enablers."
The underlying dynamics that made Noem's tenure so politically costly — the DHS partial shutdown, court battles over ICE conduct, the deaths in Minneapolis, the absence of a credible path to 1 million deportations per year — remain fully intact. Trump has replaced the face. The agenda stays.
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