By Ted Hesson, Nolan D. McCaskill, Richard Cowan and Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) – Kristi Noem, who oversaw U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown and faced bipartisan criticism in hearings this week over a $220 million ad contract, will leave her role as homeland security chief at the end of the month.
Trump will tap Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin to replace her, he said on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, a move that would require U.S. Senate confirmation.
Noem, a former governor of South Dakota, became one of Trump’s most high-profile Cabinet secretaries with social media posts that portrayed immigrants in harsh terms, highlighting cases of alleged criminal offenders and using vitriolic language.
During congressional hearings this week, Democrats and some Republicans criticized Noem for her approach to the immigration crackdown and management of her department, including concern over a $220 million ad campaign that heavily featured Noem and was awarded to two longtime Republican operatives without a standard bidding process.
Trump told Reuters on Thursday that he did not sign off on the ad campaign prominently featuring Noem, including a scene of her on horseback at Mount Rushmore in her home state of South Dakota.
In one congressional hearing this week, Noem told Republican U.S. Senator John Kennedy that Trump had approved the ad campaign.
Noem faced criticism in January when she quickly labeled two U.S. citizens fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis as committing “domestic terrorism.” Videos that emerged after the deaths undercut the assertion by Noem and other Trump officials that the two deceased – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – were violent aggressors.
The public backlash for the deaths led the Trump administration to move to a more targeted approach to immigration enforcement in Minnesota after months of sweeps through U.S. cities that led to violent clashes with residents opposing the crackdown.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives moved to impeach Noem and at least two Republicans in Congress called for her to lose her job after the incidents.
Trump said on Truth Social that Noem would be appointed envoy to a planned summit in Miami to reinforce his Western Hemisphere policies.
Within minutes of Trump’s post about her being replaced, Noem spoke at a law enforcement event in Tennessee for 40 minutes, but did not mention her departure. She acknowledged the move in a post on X later, saying, “We have made historic accomplishments at the Department of Homeland Security to make America safe again.”
STRONG EMBRACE OF TRUMP’S HARDLINE IMMIGRATION APPROACH
The staffing change raises questions about whether the Trump administration could seek to intensify its mass deportation push or retreat to a more targeted approach. Under Noem’s leadership, masked immigration agents surged into Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., scouring neighborhoods and Home Depot parking lots in search of possible immigration offenders.
Mullin, who spent a decade in the House of Representatives before becoming a senator in 2023, also supports Trump’s hardline immigration agenda. To become DHS secretary, Mullin would require Senate confirmation.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mullin said he was not expecting the call from Trump. He described Noem as a friend and said he had not had a chance to call her yet.
“She was asked to a very difficult job,” Mullin told reporters. “I think there’s an opportunity to build off successes and there’s also opportunities to build off things that maybe didn’t go quite as planned.”
Democrats in Congress have blocked funding for DHS since mid-February, saying federal immigration enforcement must be reformed. Noem’s ouster did not appear to break the stalemate.
“The problems at ICE transcend any one person,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. “The president has to end the violence and rein in ICE.”
While Trump said on Truth Social that Mullin would be installed by March 31, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, said it seemed unlikely he could be confirmed that quickly. Under U.S. law, the position requires a majority of the 100-person Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats, including Mullin’s.
“Just the paperwork alone would take longer than that,” Capito said. “I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t think it’s probable.”
TRUMP IMMIGRATION AGENDA LOSES POPULAR SUPPORT
The popularity of Trump’s immigration approach fell as agents detained U.S. citizens and tear-gassed streets in an attempt to drive up deportations, which last year fell short of the administration’s goal of 1 million per year.
While Noem, 54, served as a prominent proponent of Trump’s agenda, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a long-time Trump aide, controls Trump’s immigration policy.
Noem was quickly confirmed to lead the 260,000-employee Department of Homeland Security in January 2025 after Trump took office. On social media, she referred to immigrants convicted of crimes as “scumbags” even as the number of non-criminals arrested by immigration authorities rose under Trump.
She joined immigration enforcement operations on the ground in New York City and visited a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where Venezuelan immigrants deported by the Trump administration were being held without charges or access to lawyers.
The number of migrants caught trying to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted under Trump’s restrictive policies, a steep drop after high levels of illegal immigration under former President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Critics said Noem demonized immigrants and promoted an immigration enforcement strategy that targeted non-criminal, working immigrants and families.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson, Nolan McCaskill, Rick Cowan and Jasper Ward; Editing by Craig Timberg, Nia Williams, Deepa Babington and Chizu Nomiyama )
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