Several Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee joined their Democratic colleagues in grilling Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a congressional hearing on Tuesday, calling into question — even, at times, condemning — her leadership of the department and deportations nationwide.
The rare criticism of a Trump Cabinet official from GOP lawmakers comes amid outrage from Democrats over Noem’s handling of several recent controversies, including the killing of U.S. citizens in Minnesota by immigration enforcement officers.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), one of two GOP lawmakers who called earlier this year for Noem to resign, delivered a heated rebuke of the secretary during an oversight hearing of the Department of Homeland Security on Capitol Hill.
Tillis, who is not seeking reelection this year, raked Noem over the coals for how he said she had let federal immigration authorities go after people inside the United States, as well as how her agency had awarded Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, among other decisions.
“What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Mrs. Noem, a disaster. What we’ve seen is innocent people getting detained that turn out are American citizens,” Tillis said, adding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement ought to be seeking to arrest criminal illegal immigrants, not pursuing an evolving number of arrests per day.
Tillis criticized Noem for what he saw as her failure to respond adequately to the hurricane that ripped through western North Carolina in late 2024 in the 13 months that she had been atop the DHS. Noem has implemented a policy in which all DHS contracts over $100,000 must be approved by her team — a standard no other homeland security secretary has imposed.
“The Homeland Security Act of 2002 expressly prohibits the secretary of homeland security from restricting or diverting FEMA resources from the agency’s mission,” Tillis said. “Based on your disaster response, the chart that I just showed you, I have reason to believe that you’re violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly.”
Tillis pushed Noem on why she had not retracted her mischaracterization of shootings in Minnesota in January, as well as why the DHS had not properly let local, state, and federal police investigate the incidents. He also lambasted Noem for shooting and killing a puppy and a goat, which she had touted in a memoir as evidence that she could make tough decisions.
“Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis,” Tillis said. “We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve demonstrated anything but that in the time that I’ve seen you responding to the emergency in North Carolina and across the southeast and acknowledging when mistakes are made.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Noem to explain how she spent taxpayer funding on deals that appeared to benefit her allies.
Kennedy pushed Noem to explain why she was featured “prominently” in $220 million worth of advertisements urging illegal immigrants in the United States to self-deport.
“Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries where we were seeing the invasion come from, with putting commercials out that told them that if they were in this country illegally that they needed to leave or we would detain them and remove them,” Noem said.
Noem said twice that she and President Donald Trump talked about spending such a large amount of DHS funding on ads.
“The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently?” Kennedy asked, adding that he doubted the White House Office of Management and Budget would have approved the expenditure.
Noem pushed back and said it would “be helpful to know … how effective that communications has been.”
Kennedy was not satisfied with Noem’s response. The GOP senator said the ads had been “effective in your name recognition,” suggesting they were intended to promote Noem’s political career.
“My research shows that you did not bid them out — that you picked, in fact, one of the people you picked, the Strategy Group,” Kennedy said. “I’m sorry, Safe America Media was a company formed 11 days before you picked them, and that the Strategy Group got most of the money, and the head of that is married to your former spokesperson,” Tricia McLaughlin.
Noem insisted that she had not selected McLaughlin’s husband’s firm and that “career officials at the department chose” who won the contract to produce the ads.
“I did not have anything to do with picking those contractors,” Noem said.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said “mistakes have been made” as federal immigration authorities have sought to carry out the nation’s “largest-ever” deportation operation.
“The Trump administration has worked to deport those who don’t have a legal basis in our country,” Grassley said in his opening remarks. “Unfortunately, in the process, some DHS officers, migrants, and protesters have felt threatened, or injured, and, in very rare instances, even killed. Mistakes have been made.”
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“Let’s make it clear, one death is too many, but officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws,” Grassley said. “And there is a clear difference between conduct protected by the First Amendment and unlawful obstruction, from my perspective.”
Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot in separate incidents in which law enforcement from ICE and Customs and Border Protection took lethal action.