Donald Trump’s senior leadership team is blaming Kristi Noem for their nightmare in Minneapolis after they say her incompetence as Homeland Security secretary paved the way for Saturday’s shooting of yet another U.S. citizen.
At the heart of their frustrations is Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, Noem’s “commander at large” who she chose to serve as the public face of the president’s immigration blitz. Bovino had repeatedly raised eyebrows with his aggressive tactics even before members of his “Green Machine” were filmed on Saturday throwing 37-year-old VA nurse Alex Pretti to the ground and unloading bullets into him, horrifying the U.S. public.
Polls suggest voters were already weary of seeing Bovino’s masked and armed federal agents marauding around the country, violently detaining people, including children, and brutalizing demonstrators.
The public blowback saw Trump, 79, send his border czar, Tom Homan, to the city on Monday to oversee on-the-ground immigration enforcement operations, in a move widely seen as a snub to Homeland Security Secretary Noem, 54.
It comes after well-placed DHS sources told the Daily Beast that both the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, 68, and his immigration policy lead, Stephen Miller, 40, have fully turned against Noem and her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52.
According to two senior officials, Miller is furious that Bovino, 55, and his hardcore “turn and burn” tactics were chosen to become the focal point of the nationwide blitz.
The decision to do so, they said, was made by Lewandowski and supported by Noem.
“Bovino is Corey’s guy,” said one source, a claim that would explain why Bovino immediately went on TV to back up Noem’s assertion that Pretti was to blame for his own death, which Trump has notably stopped short of doing.
However, the elevation of Bovino and Border Patrol over ICE was “a miscalculation on Lewandowski’s part that led to declining support” for the mission, another insider said.
The result has seen a splintering among the Trump administration’s senior leadership. While Wiles, 68, simply “doesn’t like” Noem, Miller now views Noem, Lewandowski, and Bovino as a “liability,” the official said.
The administration finds itself in a bind, though, because its senior officials believe Noem is incapable of running DHS without Lewandowski at her side—and that unwinding the whole trio risks making Trump look like he is retreating, which immigration hardliner Miller is keen to avoid.
Noem and Lewandowski are thought to have been due to leave of their own volition this month before the Jan. 7 killing of protester Renee Nicole Good, 37, by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, changed everything.
Officials believe Noem had informally agreed with Trump to step down after roughly a year—taking Lewandowski and their ally, former ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, 28, with her—so the White House could claim she had finished building the deportation machine he demanded.
“Then Renee Good was shot dead, and it threw everything in the air,” one source told the Beast.
Sheahan abruptly announced her resignation in the wake of that shooting, saying on Jan. 15 that she was leaving to launch a House run in Ohio—a move ICE staffers “rejoiced” over, according to multiple DHS officials.
Her rapid exit—and the quiet sidelining of her “minions”—was read as the opening act of the Noem and Lewandowski clear-out.
One well-placed source pointed to Sheahan’s slick launch video for her congressional bid as evidence of a planned, Trump-blessed, coordinated exit.
Inside DHS, the mood was summed up by a source as “one down, two to go.”
“It’s important to remember that while Madison was often the face of Noem’s DHS havoc, she was only a symptom, not the cause. The cause is the failed leadership of Noem and Lewandowski,” they said. A second added, “Their power ran through Madison.”
However, Good’s killing—and the massive ICE surge into Minnesota that followed—is said to have made it politically impossible for Noem to walk, the sources say. If she had stepped aside then, it would have looked like she was being forced out over Good.
Now, the Pretti shooting is seen by many as a second act that may put her departure back on track.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, Lewandowski, and Bovino for comment. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday told reporters that Trump “still has confidence and trust in Secretary Noem.”
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