Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, repeatedly declined to apologize on Tuesday for suggesting that two U.S. citizens killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were domestic terrorists.
Asked by Democratic and Republican senators about comments she made in the immediate aftermath of both shootings — that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti had appeared to commit acts of domestic terrorism — Ms. Noem did not retract her remarks. She said repeatedly that her characterizations came from immigration officers in Minneapolis.
“I was getting reports from the ground, from agents at the scene,” Ms. Noem said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “And I would say that it was a chaotic scene.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the panel, scoffed in apparent disbelief. “You believe calling the victims of violence ‘domestic terrorists’ is a way to calm the scene?” he asked.
It was the first time Ms. Noem was pressed by lawmakers about her description of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti as domestic terrorists. She faced sharp criticism from senators in both parties over the fatal shootings and her department’s handling of high-profile immigration enforcement operations across the country.
As Ms. Noem testified, there were at least three people in the hearing room who have said they were unlawfully arrested by federal agents, including Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago last year.
At one point, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, urged Ms. Noem to answer questions about Ms. Martinez’s shooting, including whether it was “wrong.” Ms. Noem declined to answer specific questions, saying she did not know the details of Ms. Martinez’s case.
The four-hour hearing reflected the partisan divide in Congress over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Democrats denounced immigration agents’ aggressive tactics and enforcement operations that have swept up U.S. citizens. Although some Republicans scrutinized Ms. Noem, they largely focused on condemning the Biden administration’s border policies, and on defending the Trump administration’s deportation drive.
Ms. Noem’s testimony came at a turbulent time for her department, which is in the third week of a partial shutdown. Its funding lapsed after Democrats blocked a spending bill that they said did not go far enough to rein in immigration agents, particularly after the shooting of Mr. Pretti.
Some Republicans urged Democrats to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the U.S. assault on Iran, which has heightened the risk of terrorist threats domestically. But the topic of terrorism was largely overshadowed by the issue of immigration.
Ms. Noem’s account of the shootings of Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good appeared to contradict testimony from the heads of two federal immigration agencies, who told senators last month that their agencies did not provide Ms. Noem with an assessment that Ms. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, and Mr. Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, were domestic terrorists. The acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, said that he had seen no evidence to suggest the claims were true.
After the shooting of Ms. Good on Jan. 7, Ms. Noem accused her of trying to run over officers with her car, which she described as “an act of domestic terrorism.” Video analysis by The New York Times has shown that Ms. Good appeared to be turning the car away from the officer as he opened fire.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, told Ms. Noem that her remarks were “one of the most hurtful things” that Mr. Pretti’s family could have heard after the shooting, and asked if Ms. Noem had anything she wanted to say to his relatives.
Ms. Noem offered condolences, but did not retract her remarks.
“I did not call him a domestic terrorist,” Ms. Noem said. “I said it appeared to be an incident of” domestic terrorism.
Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican who generally aligns himself with Mr. Trump, asked some of the toughest questions of any Republican, pressing Ms. Noem on how she reached her conclusions about Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good.
Then, Mr. Kennedy accused her of blaming those comments on Mr. Miller, citing an Axios report. “Do you think it was fair to blame Mr. Miller for your words?” he asked.
“I did not do that,” Ms. Noem said, dismissing the report as false, and saying it was based on anonymous sources.
Mr. Kennedy also asked her about a ProPublica report that found that her department had spent more than $200 million on ad contracts, which he said was steered to her former political consultants. Mr. Kennedy described the ads as wasteful spending meant to boost Noem’s “name recognition.”
Ms. Noem said that she was not involved in choosing the contractors.
In another contentious exchange, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican retiring at the end of his term, accused Ms. Noem of a “failure of leadership,” and reiterated his calls for her to resign, saying her department’s immigration operations had led to the arrests of innocent U.S. citizens.
Mr. Tillis also said that he would block the Senate from confirming groups of nominees, known as blocs.
Under rules changed by Republicans last year, the Senate can confirm groups of executive branch nominees below the cabinet level with a simple majority vote, a practice meant to speed up the approval of presidential nominees.
But Republican leaders have said they would not move such groups to the floor if any senators in their party objected. Mr. Tillis’s threat could force the Senate to spend hours of valuable floor time on approving low-level nominees.
Ms. Noem and Republican lawmakers have defended the Trump administration’s deportation drive for rooting out what they call the “worst of the worst” criminals, citing a 20 percent decline in the murder rate and a 20 percent decline in overdose deaths in 2025. While both figures are accurate, it is a stretch to attribute these declines entirely to immigration enforcement. Both figures had already been declining before Mr. Trump assumed office.
Linda Qiu contributed reporting.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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