Trump fires Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Thurs­day fired his em­bat­tled Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Kristi Noem, af­ter mount­ing crit­i­cism over her lead­er­ship of the de­part­ment, in­clud­ing the han­dling of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s im­mi­gra­tion crack­down and dis­as­ter re­sponse.

Trump, who said he would nom­i­nate Ok­la­homa Re­pub­li­can Sen. Mark­wayne Mullin in her place, made the an­nounce­ment on so­cial me­dia af­ter Noem faced a two-day grilling on Capi­tol Hill this week from GOP mem­bers as well as De­moc­rats.

Noem’s de­par­ture marks a stun­ning turn­around for a close al­ly to the pres­i­dent who was tasked with steer­ing his cen­ter­piece pol­i­cy of mass de­por­ta­tions. But she ap­peared to in­creas­ing­ly be­come a li­a­bil­i­ty for Trump, with ques­tions aris­ing over her spend­ing at her de­part­ment and over her con­duct in the af­ter­math of the shoot­ing deaths of two pro­test­ers in Min­neapo­lis ear­li­er this year.

Trump said Noem “has served us well, and has had nu­mer­ous and spec­tac­u­lar re­sults (es­pe­cial­ly on the Bor­der!).” He said he was mak­ing her a “Spe­cial En­voy for The Shield of the Amer­i­c­as,” a new se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tive that he said would fo­cus on the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Noem, who ap­peared at a law en­force­ment event in Nashville, Ten­nessee, mo­ments af­ter Trump’s an­nounce­ment, did not ad­dress her ouster there. She read from pre­pared re­marks and was not asked by at­ten­dees about the de­vel­op­ment.

Lat­er, in a so­cial me­dia post, she thanked Trump for the new ap­point­ment and tout­ed her ac­com­plish­ments as sec­re­tary.

“We have made his­toric ac­com­plish­ments at the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to make Amer­i­ca safe again,” she wrote.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion’s im­mi­gra­tion crack­down faced crit­i­cism, es­pe­cial­ly in Min­neso­ta

Noem is the first Cab­i­net sec­re­tary to leave dur­ing Trump’s sec­ond term. Her tenure looked in­creas­ing­ly short-lived af­ter hear­ings in Con­gress this week where she faced rare but blis­ter­ing crit­i­cism from Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers. One par­tic­u­lar point of scruti­ny was a $220 mil­lion ad cam­paign fea­tur­ing Noem that en­cour­aged peo­ple in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly to leave vol­un­tar­i­ly.

Noem told law­mak­ers that Trump was aware of the cam­paign in ad­vance, but Trump dis­put­ed that in an in­ter­view Thurs­day with Reuters, say­ing he did not sign off on the ad cam­paign.

Noem has faced waves of crit­i­cism as she’s over­seen Trump’s im­mi­gra­tion crack­down, es­pe­cial­ly since the shoot­ing deaths of the two pro­test­ers in Min­neapo­lis at the hands of im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment of­fi­cers. The for­mer South Dako­ta gov­er­nor was al­so crit­i­cized over the way her de­part­ment has spent bil­lions of dol­lars al­lo­cat­ed to it by Con­gress.

Her de­part­ment, DHS, has been at the cen­ter of a fund­ing bat­tle in Con­gress over im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment tac­tics and has been shut down for 20 days, al­though many of the em­ploy­ees are con­tin­u­ing to work, of­ten with­out pay.

Even be­fore Noem’s ap­pear­ance be­fore key con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees this week, Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers had been an­tic­i­pat­ing the sec­re­tary’s even­tu­al ouster, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter her han­dling of the im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment crack­down in Min­neapo­lis.

As they tried to end the on­go­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty shut­down, Sen­ate Re­pub­li­cans had not­ed pri­vate­ly to De­mo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors that Noem was like­ly on her way out and that that should prompt De­moc­rats to move for­ward with agree­ing to fund the de­part­ment again, ac­cord­ing to two peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the dis­cus­sions.

De­moc­rats did not see that as an ac­tu­al con­ces­sion by Re­pub­li­cans, con­sid­er­ing Noem was be­com­ing a po­lit­i­cal li­a­bil­i­ty for the GOP, said the peo­ple, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss pri­vate ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Aside from im­mi­gra­tion, Noem al­so faced crit­i­cism — in­clud­ing from Re­pub­li­cans — over the pace of emer­gency fund­ing ap­proved through the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency and for the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­sponse to dis­as­ters.

Crit­ics wel­comed Noem’s de­par­ture. Min­neapo­lis May­or Ja­cob Frey wrote “good rid­dance” on so­cial me­dia, a sen­ti­ment echoed by Sen­ate De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer.

Some im­mi­gra­tion ac­tivists ques­tioned whether her de­par­ture would change the ex­e­cu­tion of an im­mi­gra­tion agen­da that they fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­agree with.

“This is not ac­count­abil­i­ty, just a reshuf­fling of the en­ablers of the agen­da of Pres­i­dent Trump,” said Vanes­sa Cár­de­nas, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Amer­i­ca’s Voice, an ad­vo­ca­cy group. She said Noem’s tenure was “marked by cru­el­ty.”

Gre­go­ry Bovi­no, a Bor­der Pa­trol of­fi­cial who was el­e­vat­ed un­der Noem’s watch to lead im­mi­gra­tion crack­downs in cities in­clud­ing Los An­ge­les, Chica­go and Min­neapo­lis, was one of the few who ap­plaud­ed Noem’s tenure.

“She is the best Sec­re­tary I ever worked for, pe­ri­od. The oth­ers weren’t even close. Noem is the ul­ti­mate pa­tri­ot,” Bovi­no told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

DHS lead­er­ship changes come at a piv­otal time

Mullin would need to be con­firmed by the Sen­ate, but un­der a fed­er­al law gov­ern­ing ex­ec­u­tive branch va­can­cies, he would be al­lowed to serve as an act­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty sec­re­tary as long as his nom­i­na­tion is for­mal­ly pend­ing.

Vot­ing in the Sen­ate just af­ter Trump’s an­nounce­ment, Mullin said he has “no idea” how quick­ly his nom­i­na­tion will move.

“The pres­i­dent and I are good friends. So we look for­ward to work­ing clos­er with the White House, and ob­vi­ous­ly I’m gonna be over there a lot more,” he said.

Mullin would need to be con­firmed by the Sen­ate, but un­der a fed­er­al law gov­ern­ing ex­ec­u­tive branch va­can­cies, he would be al­lowed to serve as an act­ing DHS sec­re­tary as long as his nom­i­na­tion is for­mal­ly pend­ing.

Mullin would take over the third-largest de­part­ment in gov­ern­ment that has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for car­ry­ing out Trump’s hard­line im­mi­gra­tion agen­da. And he would as­sume the role at a piv­otal time for that agen­da.

Im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment dur­ing the first year of Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion was large­ly de­fined by high-pro­file, made-for-so­cial-me­dia op­er­a­tions with flashy names, of­ten led by Bor­der Pa­trol com­man­der Gre­go­ry Bovi­no, who re­port­ed di­rect­ly to Noem. Noem her­self of­ten went out on those op­er­a­tions, rid­ing along with of­fi­cers when they went out to make ar­rests.

But those high-pro­file op­er­a­tions in places like Los An­ge­les, Chica­go and Min­neapo­lis of­ten led to clash­es with ac­tivists and pro­test­ers that were cap­tured on video and drove op­po­si­tion to the pres­i­dent’s im­mi­gra­tion agen­da.

That cul­mi­nat­ed with the shoot­ing deaths in Min­neapo­lis af­ter which Trump shuf­fled lead­er­ship of the op­er­a­tion. The num­ber of of­fi­cers there was drawn down short­ly af­ter.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Se­ung Min Kim and Mary Clare Jalonick con­tributed.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and RE­BEC­CA SAN­TANA

WASH­ING­TON (AP)