Last spring, after South Dakota governor Kristi Noem included a bizarrely detailed account of killing a pet puppy in her memoir, many agreed that she had blown her shot at being named Donald Trump’s running mate. (Not because Trump is some huge animal lover—he categorically is not—but because most Americans regard their dogs as family members and often treat them better than humans.) And while she was, in fact, overlooked for the VP job, apparently news of her puppy (and goat) slaying did not leave Noem on the outs with Trump world. In fact, the former and soon-to-be-current president has decided to bring her further into the fold, with a top job in his second administration’s Cabinet.
Numerous news outlets reported on Tuesday that Noem has been selected to serve as Trump’s secretary of homeland security, a job that would normally come with major responsibilities but will be turbocharged during Trump’s second term, should he make good on his pledge to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” As CNN notes, though Noem “does not represent a border state, she has a long history of taking hardline positions on immigration,” which is effectively a prerequisite for being a member of the Republican Party in this day and age, and certainly one for being a member of Trump’s inner circle. In a sign of the seriousness of his plans to kick millions of people out of the country, Trump this week also tapped family-separation architect Stephen Miller to serve as White House deputy chief of staff, while Tom Homan—who served as Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from January 2017 to June 2018—has been named “border czar.”
Asked last month during an interview with 60 Minutes if there was a way to “carry out mass deportation without separating families,” Homan told reporter Cecilia Vega, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.” According to The New York Times, Miller—who once reportedly killed a deal for the government to pay for mental health care for the families separated by the Trump administration—has spent the last two years “working on detailed plans for mass deportations.” During an interview with the outlet last year, he revealed that those plans include “restricting legal and illegal immigration in a number of ways, including rounding up undocumented immigrants already in the United States and detaining them in camps before they’re expelled from the country.” At a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in the days before the 2024 election, Miller told the crowd: “America is for Americans and Americans only.”
As secretary of homeland security, Noem will be in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from FEMA to the Secret Service to ICE to Customs and Border Protection. She has previously called for punishing the “sanctuary cities” that protect undocumented immigrants, and last April was banned from visiting three separate reservations that comprise about 10% of South Dakota’s 75,789.6 square miles of land area after she claimed that Mexican drug cartels “have been successful in recruiting tribal members to join their criminal activity” and that “some tribal leaders…are personally benefiting from the cartels being here.”
Trump has called Noem a “terrific person.” In addition to revealing, in graphic detail, how she killed her family's 14-month-old dog Cricket, Noem’s book also included a made-up story about meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
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