Kristi Noem was fired by President Donald Trump from her position as head of the Department of Homeland Security after a tumultuous few months overseeing the president’s immigration agenda.
Trump announced the development on Truth Social, saying she would be replaced by Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK).
“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” Trump said. “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.'”
Although Trump ran in 2024 on ramping up deportations and locking down the border, and although the DHS under Noem made progress toward those goals, public support for Trump’s immigration agenda fell significantly over the past year after the agency’s aggressive enforcement tactics spawned waves of negative headlines. Noem struggled to navigate several public relations crises during her tenure that threatened to overshadow the work of her department.
WATCH: THE AWKWARD MOMENT NOEM TAKES THE STAGE SHORTLY AFTER BEING FIRED BY TRUMP
Noem spoke briefly at a police event moments after Trump’s announcement on Thursday. In a post to X shortly after her remarks, Noem thanked Trump and touted her accomplishments in just over a year at DHS.
“Thank you @POTUS Trump for appointing me as the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas. @SecRubio and @SecWar are incredible leaders and I look forward to working with them closely to dismantle cartels that have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren,” Noem wrote.
“We have made historic accomplishments at the Department of Homeland Security to make America safe again: we delivered the MOST secure border in American history, 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S., we have located 145,000 children, [the Federal Emergency Mangement Agency] delivered disaster relief at a 100% faster rate, we ushered in the golden age of travel, saved the American taxpayer $13 billion and revitalized the U.S. Coast Guard,” Noem added.
Mullin, for his part, said he was “excited” to take on the challenge of the department.
“I had to call my dad … because it happened pretty quick, right? I had to call my wife and call my dad both,” he told Capitol Hill reporters Thursday. “It’s just pretty humbling when you start thinking about it. A little kid from west Oklahoma gets to serve in the president’s Cabinet. That’s pretty neat.”
Mullin said he needed to speak with Noem next, noting their families are “very close.”
The president was reportedly pushed to remove Noem following her performance during this week’s combative congressional hearings.
Noem’s troubles in the final months
Noem has accumulated a mountain of personal and professional problems in recent months that ranged from her department’s issuance of noncompete contracts, an alleged extramarital affair with a government employee, and her portrayal of events of two officer-involved shootings in Minnesota, among other concerns that lawmakers voiced in oversight hearings this week.
Democrats, and even some Republicans, on the House and Senate judiciary committees grilled Noem on Tuesday and Wednesday for how she handled the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration authorities during immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis earlier this year.
The secretary declined one lawmaker’s proposition to apologize or rephrase how she had described both activists as domestic terrorists due to their interference in immigration operations. Videos of the incidents cast doubt on Noem’s description of the events.
Noem was put on the spot several times by lawmakers, including Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), over the allotment of a $220 million DHS contract for advertisements that prominently featured the secretary.
Trump was upset on Wednesday and Thursday over Noem’s claim on Capitol Hill that she had discussed the massive contract with him and had his support for moving forward with the expenditure, Punchbowl News reported.
Noem also faced questions about her relationship with Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee who advises her. The affair was reported to have begun in 2019, according to a 2023 Daily Mail report, and was brought up by House Democrats on Wednesday, given Lewandowski’s personal ties to at least one company that received part of the advertising contract. That particular exchange could have been all the more awkward as her husband, Bryon Noem, had been sitting behind her for some of her testimony, but he had left the room by that point.
Members of Congress have protested Noem’s efforts to limit their visits to immigration detention centers overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid reports of abhorrent conditions inside some facilities.
Noem’s impact on border security
In January, the Washington Examiner was the first to report that Noem and Lewandowski were waging an internal campaign to force Trump’s hand-picked commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Rodney Scott, to resign because he had pushed back against the DHS’s aggressive approach to deportations and Lewandowski’s legal authority to continue working.
Sources said the lengths that the two took to push Scott toward the exit were “evil,” even forcing his top staff members to take random jobs across the department in various parts of the country to make his work unpleasant. Noem and Lewandowski were said to be eyeing Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks to replace Scott, though Scott has refused to resign.
The terminations of senior department officials, including at CBP, have continued through last week.
Late last year, the DHS mandated that Scott fire CBP’s executive assistant commissioner of enterprise services, Ntina Cooper, an award-winning government employee who personally briefed Trump on border wall plans.
A DHS-aligned source said Scott “overpromised and underdelivered” on installing the border wall quickly, saying that progress had been “incredibly slow.”
A review of border wall projects revealed that the Trump administration installed 20 miles of wall in its first year, compared to none being built in new areas of the border 30 months into the president’s first term — a dramatically faster start this time around.
Noem’s accomplishments include presiding over the department as the number of illegal immigrant arrests by Border Patrol dropped precipitously after Trump took office. CBP data show that illegal immigrant arrests at the southern border did drop to below 10,000 per month in many of the first six months of 2025, down from 100,000 to 250,000 arrests monthly under former President Joe Biden. Given that the border went from a crisis state to quiet, agents have been sent nationwide to help ICE.
Mullin to take over
In addition to Mullin, other names recently floated as potential replacements for Noem included Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz.
Mullin is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, as well as its Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, which handles homeland defense, countererrorism, and protecting from weapons of mass destruction.
During Trump’s first term, Mullin was an ardent supporter of the administration’s Remain in Mexico policy, which required asylum-seekers who crossed the southern border to return to Mexico and wait there during the duration of court proceedings.
MARKWAYNE MULLIN ‘EXCITED’ ABOUT DHS CHIEF NOMINATION: ‘I HAD TO CALL MY DAD’
At a time when Senate Democrats have held up DHS appropriations, Mullin has called for full funding of the department, including ICE, border and customs offices, transportation security, natural disaster response, cybersecurity, and the Coast Guard.
Mullin was involved in a congressional investigation into the Secret Service’s lapse during the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024.
