After more than a year of serving as the nation’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem was fired by President Trump on March 5, following mounting condemnation of the brutal tactics employed in the regime’s mass deportation campaign, including the ICE agent shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. During congressional hearings in early March, lawmakers were also critical of the $220 million worth of advertising contracts that were signed to promote the agency’s mission that prominently featured Noem dressed as a police officer, cowboy, soldier and construction worker.
In late March, reports surfaced that the DHS inspector general had launched a wide-ranging investigation into how contracts were solicited and handled, which directly involved possible ethical and criminal violations by both Noem and her de facto chief of staff Corey Lewandowski.
Soon after Noem’s termination, Trump nominated and the U.S. Senate confirmed, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin as the new Homeland Security secretary. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, who reflects on Kristi Noem’s destructive tenure, and assesses what the nation can expect from Markwayne Mullin, who now leads DHS after a more than 40-day congressional deadlock over funding for the department, linked to Democrats’ demand for major reforms to ICE.
KIKA MATOS: Yeah, look, she (Noem) came out of the gate swinging by all appearances, including her own statements. She was carrying out Trump’s mandate and Stephen Miller’s mandate, but she made a few decisions that seemed to have really irked the president. And the last straw for him was the fact that she used your dollars and my dollars—our taxpayers’ dollars—to the tune of $220 million to roll out these advertisements where she was featured. She was the central figure riding a horse in a number of places in front of Mount Rushmore, if I’m not mistaken. Speculation that she was really using this to center herself as a possible presidential candidate sometime in the future.
That’s part of the speculation, but she unleashed a level of brutality and lawlessness around immigration that we have never seen before. Minneapolis is the city that we are most familiar with where we saw the shooting deaths of two Americans who were exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression. But she in essence facilitated the creation of what many call a secret police or a paramilitary that is ICE and really normalized the idea that it is okay for law enforcement in this country to wear masks and to hide their identity and to engage in a level of violence and lawlessness directed at immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
It did not appear that Trump and his administration was as bothered by the violence and the authoritarian leanings of ICE that she authored. He was more bothered by the fact that she spent all of that money elevating her image.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right—which conflicted with Trump’s quest for attention all the time, right?
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah. Well, Kika, what’s your impression of Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullen as the new Secretary of Homeland Security? He’s got a history of endorsing violence in the Senate chambers and he’s made some statements that indicates he might depart somewhat from what Kristi Noem laid out in terms of her endorsement of the brutal mass deportation campaign endorsed by Donald Trump. What’s your take on Markwayne Mullen as he takes over the DHS?
KIKA MATOS: Look, this is, to me, the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. Markwayne Mullen is a hardline anti-immigrant person who as a senator embraced fully Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. And just to offer up a few examples, he has been a vocal defender of the administration’s mass deportation campaigns going so far as to describe ICE officers as patriots. He has expressed some skepticism about birthright citizenship and has openly stated that kids who are born in the U.S., in other words, U.S. citizen children whose parents are undocumented—if the parents are deported, he believes that the children should go with them to avoid family separation. He has also supported withholding federal funds for sanctuary cities that support their immigrant families. And following the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, he first came out swinging calling Alex Pretti a deranged individual. He had to walk that back.
But even today, he stands by his support of the officer who was involved in the shooting of Renee Good. So we’re looking at somebody who is a hardliner when it comes to immigration issues. Somebody who’s not qualified for this position. He has a background in construction and ranching. He apparently had a talk radio show about home improvements. He has run a few businesses. He’s an MMA fighter, but the kind of experience that you would think that a secretary of the Department of Homeland Security would have, he does not have. And it also appears that he has a bit of a hot temper. When a union leader was testifying, he challenged him to a physical fight and he also had a bit of a run-in with Sen. Rand Paul where he made some comment, a favorable comment about Rand Paul being beaten by one of his neighbors and Rand Paul took him to task on that.
So the things that we should be concerned about are not just specific to the radical anti-immigrant positions that he has, but also it’s really his lack of expertise and his ability to actually run such a large agency with such a big budget.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Kica Matos (16:10) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter.
