Before the 2024 elections, the idea that Kristi Noem would ever lead the Department of Homeland Security seemed unlikely. But her cruelty when she handed over this power was predictable. If Noem's name sounded to most people before the Senate confirmed to lead DHS in January of this year (to their lasting shame), it was because she shot her 14-month-old dog died in a gravel pit and included the horrific scene in her election-year memoir. She protected book, There's no turning backas “a model for America of what citizens can do here to take back their country.” Last year, she appeared in what will likely go down in history as her true form: a creature first caught on camera in March 2025 in a torture prison in El Salvador, now shortened as “ICE Barbie.” Heavily made up stylish wearing a tight white shirt, a $50,000 Rolex watch and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement baseball cap with long flowing locks, she stood in front of cells filled with men imprisoned on her orders, and delivered direct threat to immigrants in the USA: “Tits establishment,” she said, “is one of the tools in our arsenal that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”
Under Noem's leadership, ICE became most generously funded law enforcement agency in the United States. ICE agents have about 220,000 people arrestedbetween Trump taking office and October 15th. (This does not include arrests by agents of the Border Patrol, a separate DHS agency, who often accompany ICE; as of January 20, the administration declared arrested 595,000 immigrants.) On any given day, Noema's DHS is responsible for detaining about 65,000 people are in immigration detention-A record high. Breaking another record, ICE detained at least 600 children this year. The agency claimed that it had deported more than 600,000 since Trump returned to office. Noem oversaw the opening and expansion of several new immigration detention facilities. facilities and camps; two facilities in Florida notorious usage Torture techniques borrowed from secret CIA sites are now under her purview. Other DHS agencies have suspended indefinitely immigration applications from a growing number of countries targeted by Trump, and suddenly canceled immigration ceremonies. Noem has purchased planes that DHS will use for deportation flights, including two of Gulfstream's new $200 million luxury G700 jets and ten of the bankrupt budget airline's Boeing 737s, each without an engine. DHS press releases are now filled openly mocking immigrants; their social media accounts dominated white nationalist slop. Noem has since admitted that she directed removal – more of a mass abduction than deportation – of 261 people to a prison camp in El Salvador in March, in disobedience court decisions.
While anti-immigration DHS agents may hide their faces in balaclavas, Noem is actively promoting the agency and Trump's promised mass deportations. ICE Barbie falls somewhere between a tool and a cover for the agency's “assault and kidnapping” campaign. words used by one woman who was grabbed by armed, masked agents while driving to work in Chicago. Tens of thousands of people were captured on the city's streets by armed, masked men working for DHS. Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Chicago, Baltimore, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Charlotteand others. Thousands people all over the country were vigilant V identification And tracking these agents terrorize their neighbors. In just the past few weeks, federal immigration agents have unleashed an attack dog on a Washington state man. according to to your senator; pursued a Louisiana woman (US citizen) as she walked home from the corner store; pepper sprayed residents Somali region in Minneapolis; furiously pulled a Key Largo woman getting out of her car on her way to work, still dressed in her hospital scrubs; And pursued the man drove from the Home Depot parking lot onto the street where he was reportedly hit by a car.
Noem sometimes appeared on the streets here and there. comicalbut she seems to prefer a more controlled setting. Appearing in costume in a torture prison in El Salvador was not an anomaly. Presiding over opening In July, at an American concentration camp in the Everglades, Noem wore a white vest, dark blue skinny jeans and a crisp white MAGA baseball cap with gold lettering. Before touring the empty chain-link cages, Noem said that news organizations should be held accountable for reporting on an app designed to track ICE operations. (In December, the creators of one such application, ICEBlock, sued Noem also enriched herself and those around her with these authoritarian images by starring in a series of anti-immigrant DHS commercials produced by a company with longstanding ties to Noem, as did ProPublica. reportedwho were awarded a $200 million DHS contract without competition.
Today's Kristi Noem, posing in front of the cages, bears little resemblance to the woman who arrived in Congress in 2011. Mention wrote after leaving the House of Representatives in 2019, she “did not pursue a career outside of Washington.” Today it sounds false. As she moved closer to Trump in recent years, she also began to take the form of any number of women he might see on Newsmax or around Mar-a-Lago: long, highlighted, curled hair that frames high cheekbones, full lips and eyes that seem to be hidden behind eyelash extensions.
