Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem already had weathered missteps in the past year pressing the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policy and changes to federal disaster relief — and then came her response to immigration agents fatally shooting two Minnesotans.
The former South Dakota governor claimed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care-unit nurse, attacked immigration officers and was “brandishing” a gun, two claims that appear to have no evidence and to even be refuted by multiple videos of the shooting, and helped fuel concerns about escalating clashes with the public.
Now Noem is in the middle of blowback from Congress and the public about the Department of Homeland Security approach to public safety, which has reignited a debate over DHS funding and sparked calls for her to lose her job.
