Since her confirmation as secretary of homeland security in January, Kristi Noem has appeared completely over her head at her new job. Most recently, when asked to define the legal principle of “habeas corpus,” the former South Dakota governor — one of the country’s top law enforcement officials — face-planted.
America is less safe with Noem assigned as its chief protector
It was merely the latest in a string of embarrassments that underscores that America is less safe with Noem assigned as its chief protector. Noem’s department — hastily founded in a moment of fear — is charged with protecting the United States from threats both external and internal. With her focus turned almost exclusively toward executing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy at all costs, the Department of Homeland Security has become a threat to our rights and liberties — many of which Noem apparently doesn’t even know Americans possess.
As homeland security secretary, Noem wields powers that range all the way from immigration to natural disaster relief to cybersecurity. It would be a lot of responsibility for one person who is supremely well-versed in all those areas. Noem is not that person. Instead, over the last few years, she has systematically recrafted herself as the perfect TV-ready simulacrum of a MAGA Cabinet member. Even though her state is nowhere near the border, as governor she glommed on to the right-wing anti-immigrant fervor. Even when Trump has been skeptical of her qualifications, as during her brief time on the shortlist to be his running mate last year, he has rewarded her loyalty to the cause.
But her most Trumpian public relations efforts since she took office have backfired. Noem has been roundly mocked for her costume choices in her interviews and for wearing full-face makeup when she has tagged along on Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The $50,000 Rolex flashing on her wrist while she posed in front of incarcerated men at a mega-prison in El Salvador smacked of callous cruelty. And the theft of her bag — along with $3,000 cash and her work badge — while she was sitting in a Washington restaurant was peak irony for a top security official.
But Noem’s performance in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday underscored how truly ill-equipped she is for this moment — or, at least, for a job to keep Americans safe. While Noem was testifying on Trump’s budget request for the upcoming year, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., questioned her about the ancient right to challenge an arrest or imprisonment:
“Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to ... ,” Noem responded before she was cut off by Hassan.
“That’s incorrect,” the senator said.
“Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason,” Hassan said, calling it a “foundational right.”
“So Secretary Noem, do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides, that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone?” she asked.
Noem responded, “I support habeas corpus. I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.”
It’s true that two of our greatest presidents — Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt — did suspend habeas during times of war. The Constitution does allow for doing so during a rebellion or an invasion, but legal scholars widely believe that the Suspension Clause assigns Congress, not the president, the power to suspend that right. Crucially, the Trump administration has been busy trying to sell the lie that we are at war, facing an invasion from migrants to the South. There’s no real basis in this framing, in law or on the ground, but it is a fiction that has been used to invoke all sorts of emergency powers already.
Noem’s willingness to perform as a White House puppet makes her much more dangerous than any other secretary in her department’s brief history.
As Noem oversees a deportation program that threatens to grow more expansive by the day, she has already proved herself to be extremely pliable on this front. She has wildly claimed that Afghan refugees can safely return to their home country, despite the clear threat of Taliban reprisals, and she has made no effort to retrieve people who have already been wrongfully deported. None of this speaks to her being a valiant defender of American rights and ideals.
Moreover, as a Cabinet member, Noem on paper reports to nobody but the president. Likewise, on paper she’s the one who has operational control over ICE and Customs and Border Protection. But it is obvious that when it comes to immigration, her marching orders come primarily from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. And Miller hasn’t been shy about his belief that habeas could be suspended to fight the imagined invasion threat.
Noem’s willingness to perform as a White House puppet makes her much more dangerous than any other secretary in her department’s brief history. When DHS was first cobbled together after the Sept. 11 attacks, the new department was sold to the public as a shield against terrorism. But it has always been a weapon easily pointed back at the population it is meant to defend. Noem’s apparent ignorance is cause for mockery, yes, but also for alarm: the dread of seeing a loaded firearm in the hands of someone entirely unsure how it works.
