President-elect Donald Trump picked South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to be his secretary of Homeland Security, selecting another loyalist to lead an agency central to his efforts to crack down on the number of immigrants who enter the country without permission.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, Trump heralded Noem for deploying her state’s National Guard to the southern border. He said that she would work closely with his newly appointed “border czar” to secure the United States’ southern border.
The Homeland Security position requires Senate confirmation. Trump’s announcement is an indication that he intends to nominate Noem for Senate approval.
Noem in a statement said she was “honored and humbled” by the appointment. “I look forward to working with Border Czar Tom Homan to make America SAFE again,” she wrote. “With Donald Trump, we will secure the Border, and restore safety to American communities so that families will again have the opportunity to pursue The American Dream.”
Noem, a close Trump ally who was at one time under consideration to be his running mate and joined him on the 2024 campaign trail, served as South Dakota’s congresswoman from 2011 to 2019. She was elected the state’s first female governor in 2018 and was reelected in 2022.
Her nomination as Homeland Security secretary will give her a pivotal role in curbing the flow of migrants across the nation’s southern border. Illegal border crossings were at the center of Trump’s campaign, even though migrant apprehensions have plunged from a year ago.
Noem’s appointment comes as Trump has tapped two other conservative hardliners to help oversee his long-promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Homan, a former Border Patrol agent who rose to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was tapped as “border czar.” Stephen Miller, a top immigration adviser to Trump, will serve as White House deputy chief of staff for policy.
A rancher, farmer and small-business owner, the 52-year-old Noem was briefly under consideration as Trump’s vice presidential running mate earlier this year. But her bid quickly crumbled amid a public backlash after Noem acknowledged in a memoir earlier this year that she shot and killed her dog Cricket for being “untrainable.”
Noem also claimed in her memoir, “No Going Back,” to have met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while she served as the state’s representative in Congress. Noem wrote that Kim underestimated her, “having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”
But the anecdote was false. Noem’s spokesperson said Kim was incorrectly included on a list of world leaders with whom she had met and that the anecdote would be removed in subsequent printings.
As South Dakota governor, Noem has pushed a conservative agenda including signing an abortion “trigger law” that banned the procedure − except when a mother’s life is danger − when the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade and a constitutional right to an abortion.
All nine native American tribes in South Dakota this year barred Noem from reservations after the governor made comments accusing tribal leaders of profiting off drug cartels.
Earlier this year, House Republicans impeached President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, over his handling of border security, arguing that he deliberately and willfully allowed the migration crisis on the southern border to reach an extreme state. The House, voting mostly along party lines, approved two articles of impeachment – one accusing Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and another accusing him of “breach of public trust.”
