Shootings in Minneapolis underscore how Kristi Noem has transformed DHS [View all]

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In the year since Noem left her post as South Dakota’s governor to lead the Department of Homeland Security, the agency has dramatically transformed in ways that are increasingly visible to the American public. Immigration and Border Patrol agents are deploying to city streets, entering neighborhoods and homes to make arrests, and aggressively spraying protesters with tear gas — often in ways that many civil rights lawyers believe is breaking the law.

Homeland Security’s sprawling deportation campaign is a marked departure from the agency’s focus after its founding in the aftermath of Sept. 11. The department was created to protect the nation against foreign terrorists and work closely with federal and local agencies. Under Noem’s leadership, the agency has moved its focus to immigration enforcement — pulling and cutting resources from other operations, like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to carry out the president’s mass deportation campaign.

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Although Democratic lawmakers are calling for Noem’s impeachment, her approach has won Trump’s praise, and she has already been in office longer than four of the six DHS secretaries during the president’s first administration. But public support for her agenda is declining. A recent Quinnipiac University national poll found that 52 percent disapproved of Noem’s performance as DHS secretary, and 57 percent also disapproved of ICE’s enforcement actions more broadly.

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Some former DHS officials and academics said that the agency’s messaging is a sharp contrast with the bipartisan tone agency officials heralded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. When DHS was founded, 22 federal departments and agencies were combined, with the idea that enhanced coordination could help thwart another attack. Now some worry that increased partisanship could lead to less coordination, particularly with local law enforcement, some in blue cities the agency is now targeting.

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Last fall, DHS reassigned dozens of FEMA employees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help vet and process new hires for the government’s mass deportation initiative. More recently, DHS terminated dozens of FEMA employees while also approving the extension of some workers who are still detailed to ICE, according to an official familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

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