Trump fires homeland security secretary Kristi Noem | Kristi Noem

Donald Trump announced Thursday that he had succeeded Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security, ending weeks of bipartisan complaints about her leadership after immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens and reports emerged that she had a personal relationship with a top lawmaker.

Noem’s firing was the first major personnel change of Trump’s second term. The president made this public in a post on Truth Social, in which he said Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin would take over from Noem starting March 31.

Noem, who Trump said has “served us well and achieved numerous and extraordinary results (especially at the Border!),” will be special envoy for the “Inter-American Shield,” a security initiative that Trump plans to announce over the weekend.

“It’s humbling,” Mullin told reporters on Thursday. “Because it all happened so quickly, I had to call my dad, and it’s pretty humbling when you start to think about a little kid from western Oklahoma serving in the president’s cabinet. It’s pretty cool.”

In her statement about X, Noem thanked Trump for appointing her to the new position while promoting her record as a department leader. News of the firing broke just before she spoke to a group of police officers in Nashville, but Noem did not bring it up on stage.

While Democrats applauded Noem’s departure, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference: “We’re glad we escaped. She was a disaster.”

But Jeffries said that wouldn’t change Democrats’ stance on funding the Homeland Security Department. It has been partially shut down since mid-February after Senate Democrats blocked a spending measure because it did not include new rules governing the conduct of immigration officers that they had requested in response to the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

Jeffries said: “Personnel change is not enough. We need a bold, dramatic, transformative and meaningful change in policy.”

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer echoed Jeffries, saying: “Given the policies he has espoused and how ICE is structured, I have no confidence in anyone in charge of this agency while Trump is president. The rot is deep.”

In a sign of his waning support among Republicans, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement: “I appreciate Secretary Noem’s service to our country. She will do a great job fighting drug cartels in her new role as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, and I know she will continue to contribute in the future. But I think it is time for a change.”

Noem, a former Republican congresswoman and governor of South Dakota, was seen as a potential running mate for Trump seeking re-election in 2024, but was ultimately dropped after admitting in a memoir to killing a dog he owned. The president instead nominated him to lead DHS, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol, and other agencies that took to the streets of major U.S. cities to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda in his second term.

Noem has become the public face of the crackdown, which has seen U.S. citizens as well as documented and undocumented immigrants regularly appear in promotional materials on conservative television networks and on DHS social media accounts.

After federal agents sent to Minneapolis killed Renee Good and, weeks later, Alex Pretti, Noem accused both U.S. citizens of participating in “domestic terrorism.” But the allegations appeared to disregard what is known about both their involvement in anti-ICE protests, and Democrats and some Republicans called for Noem to resign after Pretti’s death.

Simultaneously, reports began to emerge that the department was in turmoil and that Noem had become involved in a personal affair with Trump’s former campaign manager and senior advisor Corey Lewandowski, even though they were both married.

In February, the Wall Street Journal published: a long report He appealed to department leadership, who found Noem and Lewandowski did little to hide their personal relationship, berating staff and administering polygraph tests to people they did not trust.

The two were traveling on a luxury 737 Max jet with a private cabin; The ministry wanted to purchase this jet for approximately $70 million for “high-profile deportation operations.” In one instance, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot who left a blanket belonging to Noem on the plane, but later reinstated him because there was no one else to fly them back.

Democrats denounced Noem when she appeared before the House and Senate judiciary committees in early March. While he refused to retract his comments describing the US citizens killed in Minneapolis as “domestic terrorists”, he described the question about whether he had “sexual intercourse” with Lewandowski as “tabloid nonsense”.

But even some Republicans have signaled concerns about his leadership; Louisiana senator John Kennedy questioned why DHS gave $220 million to a firm linked to Noem’s former spokeswoman to run ads prominently featuring the secretary.

Thom Tillis of North Carolina, one of several Republicans who have called for Noem’s resignation, accused her of obstructing investigations by the department’s inspector general, while threatening to halt Senate business if she didn’t get answers to a series of questions from Noem.

He also took him to task for killing a dog and a goat in his book, saying: “These are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened in Minneapolis.”