STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump has fired his Homeland Security secretary.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Kristi Noem made herself the public face of the administration's mass deportations project. Now she is a casualty in the first cabinet shakeup of Trump's second term. The president announced her firing in a Truth Social post on Thursday and said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, would replace her. Coming up, one of his colleagues, Senator Amy Klobuchar joins us to talk about it. First, the latest information.
INSKEEP: Let's talk this through with NPR immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo. Ximena, good morning.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: How'd this come about?
BUSTILLO: Well, we didn't know Trump would fire her, but during two congressional hearings before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees this week, I did notice that both Republicans and Democrats had questions about her leadership, including how efficiently the agency distributed disaster relief funds and what she had been spending her agency's money on. One of the most notable moments came during questions from GOP Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. He asked Noem about a multimillion-dollar immigration-related ad campaign that she ran last year. The contract for the ads went to a firm that was created just days before. And according to reporting from investigative news outlet ProPublica, one of the beneficiaries was connected with the husband of former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. Now, NPR has not independently confirmed that reporting, but Kennedy did ask Noem if President Trump had asked her to run these ads, and Noem said and basically confirmed that Trump was OK with it.
INSKEEP: Kennedy's questioning was interesting because he asserted that this contract was for hundreds of millions of dollars and that they basically promoted Noem rather than administration policy, that they were promotional ads for her and done by a company with political connections to her. Although, it strikes me that that was her most prominent job was being the face of immigration enforcement.
BUSTILLO: Right. She was featured in many promotional social media videos, including standing in places like El Salvador's notorious prison, CECOT, and on the front lines of many individual immigration arrests themselves. And she always defended the actions of the agency, but that backfired after events in Minnesota. If you remember, two U.S. citizens were killed by immigration officers there back in January, and after the death of one of them, Alex Pretti, Noem was quick to label him a domestic terrorist.
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KRISTI NOEM: This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism. That's the facts.
BUSTILLO: Now, that language, although used before, drew immediate bipartisan scrutiny in this case.
INSKEEP: OK. So she's out. We haven't even gone through all the different controversies involving her, and she is to be replaced by Markwayne Mullin, United States senator from Oklahoma. When would he start?
BUSTILLO: Trump says that Mullin takes over by the end of March, although, of course, he does need to get confirmed by the Senate to officially take on the post. Here's Mullin speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill after the announcement.
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MARKWAYNE MULLIN: I am super excited about this opportunity. It came at a - not a complete surprise, but it came at a little bit of surprise, course. And so, the president and I, as you guys know, we're great friends, and we get along great. I look forward to working with him in his cabinet. Of course, we still got to go with this little thing called confirmation.
BUSTILLO: One of his first tasks will be to address the lack of trust in immigration enforcement, which was a big theme this week during those hearings.
INSKEEP: Where does the agency stand overall?
BUSTILLO: The agency is now in its third week without funding, which means hundreds of thousands of employees are furloughed or working without pay. Now, zooming out, Trump won his election in part due to promises to clamp down on border security. But in the wake of Minnesota, nearly two-thirds of Americans say Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gone too far. That's according to a poll from NPR/PBS News and Marist last month. Still, immigration enforcement continues to be a top issue for the president and for Democrats as we enter the midterm cycle.
INSKEEP: NPR's Ximena Bustillo. Thanks, as always.
BUSTILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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