For all the Trump administration’s insistence on the importance of deporting criminals, no one has made the job as complicated as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem. Which is why on Tuesday, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, some of the most caustic rebukes she received came from fellow Republicans.
Sen. Thom Tillis (North Carolina) called out the Biden administration’s immigration failures — then scolded Noem for her own. “What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership,” he said, repeating his call for her resignation. Sen. John Neely Kennedy (Louisiana) commended the secure U.S.-Mexico border but asked Noem how she could square a “concern for waste” with spending “$220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently.”
Noem got gentler treatment from Republicans at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. But it remains true that she has created a political nightmare for immigration hawks. While most voters still support cracking down on illegal immigration, sloppy enforcement and tone-deaf messaging have undermined Homeland Security’s credibility. Heading into the midterms, one of the GOP’s most potent issues is losing its edge.
Good faith Republicans understand that arresting friendly neighbors, useful workers and pregnant women hurts the broader case for deportations. But it took Tillis, who is not running for reelection, to tell the truth. “We’re beginning to get the American people to think that deporting people is wrong. It’s the exact opposite,” Tillis said, who wore a “back the blue” pin on his lapel. “The way you’re going about deporting them is wrong.”
The polling backs him up. In the latest Harvard CAPS-HarrisX poll, “deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes” is Trump’s second-most popular issue (75 percent of all voters approve), but hiring additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct raids is among his least popular (45 percent). When asked about ICE as an institution, only 39 percent of respondents answered favorably. In the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll, 61 percent of U.S. adults support deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally, but only 39 percent support the administration’s tactics.
Part of the problem is the scope of operations. Under Noem’s leadership, ICE is doing too much, too fast, and it’s leading to the kind of sloppiness that discredits the agency and its law enforcement mission. In pursuit of mass deportations, ICE has gone after more than just hardened criminals, but also families, minors and even American citizens. Tillis noted the dangers of chasing numbers, shouting: “We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day, because numbers matter, right? No, they don’t matter. Quality matters — not quantity, quality.”
Republicans are right to point out that sanctuary policies force ICE into communities as they search for criminal targets. But that doesn’t explain why agents killed two Americans, why agents are pepper-spraying unsuspecting families, why they shot an American five times — and later bragged about it. There are plenty of other examples, but these are already too many.
Congress might save ICE from some of these excesses as it negotiates reforms — including more training and oversight measures — as part of the ongoing DHS budget showdown. But it can’t save the department from a self-inflicted PR crisis.
“Most Americans favor immigration enforcement,” Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told me. “They just don’t want to see or hear much about it.” That’s quite the conundrum for a politician like Noem, who — from her flashy outfits to her multimillion-dollar ad campaign — clearly loves the spotlight.
But comparing deportations to searching for Pokémo or posting a videoplaying up shackles used on a deportation flight make light of deadly serious operations. Noem likes to tell liberals to turn down the inflammatory rhetoric against ICE, but she should consider how her own communication could endanger agents.
Jokey rhetoric pervades the messaging. On Jan. 21, the administration announced Homeland Security’s “Operation Catch of the Day” in Maine. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) later told me she was “offended by the name of the operationand thought that it was disrespectful.” She appealed directly to Noem. The operation was shut down before the month was out. But it’s another example of how Noem’s department needlessly complicates its job. Immigration enforcement in the state has gone back to “normal activities,” according to Collins, and reports of federal agents detaining people have continued this month. The surge sent a panic through Maine school systems and kicked off a stream of protests. A February pollshows that more Mainers believe ICE makes the country less safe than safer.
Inflammatory slogans come easily from Noem’s comms shop; the facts rarely follow. Of the more than 200 migrants who were detained during the Maine operation, which was supposedly aimed at“the worst of the worst,” it’s unclear how many were criminals. When I asked DHS, I was sent only four examples of convicted or charged criminals — the same four listed on its press release. Some of the migrants were returned after they were found to have pending asylum claims. It’s hard to convince Americans that you’re carefully targeting depraved criminals if you can’t readily prove it.
Americans are willing to support orderly deportations — they voted for a president who promised to do them en masse. But Americans are also generous and accommodating. Understanding that some deportations are necessary doesn’t mean they want to see neighbors, workers and parents chased down by an agent — much less turned into a social media spectacle.
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