Lawmakers from both parties criticized Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s handling of immigration enforcement in a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
In a hearing that lasted more than four hours, they pressed her on everything from ad contracts to the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents in Minnesota. The embattled secretary, who has faced calls for her resignation, is currently overseeing a department that is in its third week of being shut down.
“You only talk about situations like this that we are conducting, and you don’t talk about the good work that we do to protect people from being victimized by people that are in this country that want to conduct violent crimes against them,” Noem said in response to questioning from Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar about a U.S. citizen who was detained by ICE, despite having proof of citizenship. “The laws need to apply to everyone.”
In his opening remarks, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee chair, said that “mistakes have been made” in the agency’s immigration enforcement operations.
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“Let’s make it clear, one death is too many,” Grassley said. “But officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort, acknowledged that it was necessary to carry out investigations into the Minnesota shootings.
“[The shootings] should be investigated in Minnesota, we want to have orderly processes,” Graham said.
“If they go too far, we will hold them accountable,” Graham added.
Noem faced criticism from Republican and Democratic senators on the committee about the department’s handling of federal funds and its widespread use of aggressive force. She also repeatedly faced questions about whether she would rescind or apologize for her comments that claimed without evidence that Pretti and Good had been “engaged in acts of domestic terrorism,” which she repeatedly declined to do.
The Senate hearing was the first of two congressional DHS hearings this week. Noem is also set to appear tomorrow before the House Judiciary Committee.
The shootings — and ICE’s aggressive immigration tactics throughout the country — were a consistent theme throughout the hearing. Sen. Dick Durbin grilled Noem about the information she and the department posted on social media following the deadly Minneapolis shootings, accounts which government officials and eyewitness accounts have disputed.
Noem repeatedly said that she was “getting reports from the ground and agents at the scene,” and that the situation on the ground “was chaotic.”
“Is it so hard to say you were wrong?” Durbin asked in one heated exchange about Noem’s statements that Alex Pretti had been engaged in acts of domestic terrorism before he was shot.
“You and your agency rushed to brand these victims as ‘domestic terrorists,’” Durbin said. “We have ample video evidence and eyewitness testimony proving you are wrong. Your statements caused immeasurable pain to these families.”
In response, Noem said she “strived to provide accurate information, and will continue to do so,” but did not address the accusations.
Noem said she believed there were approximately 650 federal immigration agents left in Minnesota, even after border czar Tom Homan had announced a wind down of operations weeks prior.
Perhaps the most tense exchange of the hearing was between Noem and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. The senator, who is retiring at the end of this term, is one of the few Republicans who have publicly called for Noem to step down. He threatened to deny quorum and bill markups in as many committees as possible and block all Senate nominations if she does not answer his questions regarding DHS operations in his state.
Tillis also pointed to a letter from DHS’s Office of Inspector General that said Noem had stopped internal investigations into 10 incidents.
“Quality matters, not quantity,” Tillis said. “What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem, a disaster.”
Noem was also questioned about recent DHS ads in which she warns immigrants that if they “cross the border illegally, we’ll find you. Break our laws? We’ll punish you.”
ProPublica reported the ads were made by a Noem-tied firm as part of a $220 million ad campaign. Noem said that she had spoken with Trump about the ads ahead of making them.
“[The ads] were effective in your name recognition,” Sen. John Kennedy told Noem. “To me it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot. I’m not saying you’re not telling the truth, it’s just hard for me to believe knowing the president as I do, that you said ‘Mr. President, here’s some ads I’ve cut and I’m going to spend $220 million running them,’ that he would have agreed to that. I don’t think Russ Vought at OMB would have agreed to that. It’s something we have to defend, I’m on the appropriations committee.”
Congress and the White House continue to debate funding for the department, which has been a point of contention following the Minnesota shootings. While a funding bill passed in the House, with the support of seven Democrats, it has repeatedly failed in the Senate.
“We are more than willing to fund TSA, more than willing to fund Coast Guard, more than willing to fund FEMA,” Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said at the hearing. “It is the administration holding those agencies hostage in order to extract additional funding for ICE and CBP.”
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