Trump names South Dakota governor to head Homeland Security with immigration mandate
New York: US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which controls immigration-related agencies.
Announcing her nomination on the social media platform ‘Truth Social’ on Tuesday night, Trump said, “Kristi has been very strong on Border Security.”
With Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, her nomination would complete the trio of positions impacting Trump’s high-priority immigration agenda, which includes mass deportations.
She was reported to have been on Trump’s shortlist of Vice President candidates.
Noem said, “With Donald Trump, we will secure the border, and restore safety to American communities.”
She shares Trump’s hardline stand on immigration and sent South Dakota’s National Guard to Texas in support of Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s border control action in defiance of President Joe Biden’s administration.
Noem also offered to send razor wires to reinforce Abbott’s barriers along the border, which the Supreme Court ordered to be removed.
Her sprawling department has a broad reach over internal security.
It includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is in charge of deportations; Customs and Border Protection, which deploys border agents, and Citizenship and Immigration Service, which processes applications for immigration and citizenship.
She will also have charge of the Secret Service, which provides VIP security and has been criticised for failing to stop the shooter in the first assassination attempt against Trump.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency are also under the department.
Noem held the state’s lone House of Representatives seat before she was elected Governor.
She describes herself as a rancher and farmer and tries to present a picture of her as a down-to-earth frontiersperson.
In her pugnacious memoir, “No Going Back,” she talked about shooting her dog during a hunt because it was very aggressive and could not be trained and cited it as an example of her firmness in carrying out necessary “difficult, messy, and ugly” actions.