President of the United States Donald Trump fired the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, on Thursday, who will leave her post effective March 31, 2026. She will be replaced by Senator from Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin. 'She will become a special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, our new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere (a term Washington uses to refer to the Americas), which we will announce on Saturday in Doral, Florida,' the president wrote on his Truth Social account. Noem, former governor of South Dakota, was heavily criticized for her handling of the crisis surrounding immigration raids in Minnesota, which resulted in the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens by federal agents, whom she herself accused of 'domestic terrorism' without providing any evidence. Furthermore, this week she appeared at the Capitol in a controversial intervention where she refused to retract those comments, blamed the protesters for the chaos, and defended Trump's policy of mass deportations. She was harshly questioned by Democratic senators and also by Republican Thom Tillis, who called for her resignation and recalled the controversial episode in her book where Noem described how she killed her dog and a goat. Precisely because of what happened in Minnesota, the DHS has been partially shut down due to a lack of funding since February 14, awaiting an agreement between Democrats and Republicans on changes to the operational procedures of immigration raids to unblock the approval of the budget item. Aside from the controversial raids in Minnesota, the pressure on Noem has been increasing in recent days due to a controversial and aggressive campaign to publicize her department's work awarded last year. It has been revealed that her portfolio led a 'border emergency' to justify the awarding, without prior bidding, of the campaign, valued at some 220 million dollars, to an entity controlled by the husband of the former DHS press secretary, Tricia McLaughlin. In an interview with Reuters today, Donald Trump himself stated he had no knowledge of those contracts. Mullin, Noem's replacement, is a Cherokee Nation businessman who won a seat as a senator for Oklahoma in 2023.
