Kristi Noem’s departure from the DHS won’t mean an end to agency’s violent tactics | US immigration
Some of the most flamboyant implementers of Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda have left or been forced to leave the administration in recent weeks.
In January, the president recalled Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, the face of immigration crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis, from his front-line post. Tricia McLaughlin, the top spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security — notorious for exaggerated and outright false public statements — He left his job last month. On Thursday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kristi Noem was fired.
But human rights advocates and organizers across the United States do not expect the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics to change on the ground.
“We forced the Trump administration to fire Kristi Noem,” said co-founder Erika Zurawski. Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (Mirac), a group that helped organize large-scale protests against the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
He said public backlash against the so-called Operation Subway Surge, which Noem orchestrated and resulted in the murders of two U.S. citizens and the indiscriminate smuggling of immigrants from city streets, undoubtedly led to the secretary’s downfall.
“This was a victory for the people. But the problem is that we cannot celebrate the victory because the violence is still going on, the kidnappings are still going on.”
Hundreds of immigration agents remained in Minnesota weeks after the administration announced the withdrawal. Although Democrats in Congress tried to block DHS funding by demanding restrictions on the operation of immigration agents, enforcement continued across the country. At least two immigrants have recently died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
The National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group, called the Trump administration’s decision to replace Noem with hard-line Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin “the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig.”
“I hope neither the American public nor our elected officials will be distracted by today’s personnel shakeup at the top of DHS or the internal changes that preceded it,” said Faisal Al-Juburi of Raíces, a nonprofit legal services and advocacy organization. “Mass deportation is still at the heart of the Trump administration’s agenda. That hasn’t changed, and so we have every reason to believe it’s a domestic issue.” [immigration] “Sanctions will continue to target people in our American cities based on race and regardless of their status.”
In congressional hearings before Noem’s ouster, it became clear that lawmakers, including Republicans who generally supported Trump’s immigration agenda, were tired of Noem’s theatrical approach to her role, especially given that the majority of Americans were unimpressed by Noem’s penchant for grandiosity.
“We’re starting to think it’s wrong to deport people, the American people,” Thom Tillis, a retired senator from North Carolina, said this week at a congressional hearing on Noem’s tenure. “On the contrary. The way you deported them is wrong.”
This was a woman who traveled to El Salvador to pose in front of inmates at a sprawling megaprison where DHS had sent more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants in violation of a federal judge’s directive. He traveled across the US border on horseback and ATV, cameras following him as he escorted violent immigration raids. He appeared camera-ready to gleefully showcase the brutality of an internment camp in the Florida Everglades called “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“Noem brought a public performance and spectacle to her tenure as secretary of homeland security. This is what distinguishes her from her predecessors,” Al-Juburi said.
But it’s unclear whether Noem’s firing or other personnel changes mean management will leave the show. Al-Juburi noted that Mullin is a former MMA fighter who gained national attention after threatening the Teamsters president during a congressional hearing.
Trump’s immigration agenda was central to his presidential campaign, and throughout his second term, his administration openly supported even the most extreme immigration actions through social media memes and press releases alike.
Even as journalists and lawyers began sounding the alarm that hundreds of immigrant children were being forcibly separated from their parents, authorities backtracked on claims they first made when they insisted there had been no family separations at the border for a year.
This time, the administration revealed its brutality towards immigrant communities.
Democratic leaders in Congress have continued to hold out on DHS funding, demanding reforms including requiring immigration officers to wear ID and body cameras and to stop operating near schools, medical facilities, churches, polling places, child care facilities and courts.
But the agency is still expected to use its increased budget to purchase warehouses to be converted into detention centers and to deploy various surveillance technologies against immigrants and American citizens. The administration has already eviscerated the agency’s monitors.
“By design, DHS is shielded from scrutiny and not controlled by oversight,” Al-Juburi said. “It was true yesterday, it is true today, it will be true tomorrow.”
