Kristi ‘ICE Barbie’ Noem has been called out by some of her own colleagues for peddling a bogus tale about immigration agents saving Americans from a “cannibal.”
The Homeland Security secretary used the grisly story last summer to justify the agency’s targeted immigration enforcement, offering an example of the “kind of deranged individuals that are on our streets in America, that we’re trying to target and get out of our country.”
Sitting alongside President Trump at a press conference at the so-called ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention center in Florida, she said ICE, which is under the umbrella of the DHS, had “detained a cannibal and put him on a plane to take him home, and while they had him in his seat, he started to eat himself.”
She repeated the falsehood during a Fox News interview, telling Jesse Watters that “he was literally eating his own arms.” She then added more detail, claiming: “He called himself a cannibal and ate other people and ate himself that day.”
Now, three officials, one from her department, have rubbished the story and said they were never able to find any records to back her claims up. “That is completely made up,” a senior federal law enforcement official told The Intercept. “That never happened.”
“There was no information about it” when checks were run by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, another source said, adding: “It never took place. It’s a lie.”
Noem said she got the story from an air marshal who works on the deportation flights. One of the sources refused to buy this, saying it came from Noem’s imagination. “I cannot condone somebody making up a story that absolutely never happened,” the senior official said.
Indeed, the DHS leaned on the air marshal excuse when reached for comment by The Intercept.
“What ‘fabrication’ of the story of the cannibal?” a spokesperson said. “She was told that story on a deportation flight by one of the air marshals.”
Sources in federal law enforcement vented frustration to the news outlet over having to clean up what they described as Noem’s mess.
“Why would she even say something so insane as this?” one said, while another called the story “obviously utterly false.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the DHS for comment.
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