President Trump fired Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary on Thursday and announced plans to replace her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, concluding a long-building frustration with Ms. Noem that had come to a head this week with her grilling by Republicans at congressional hearings.
Mr. Trump announced the change on social media, along with a new, and previously nonexistent, role for Ms. Noem inside the administration: special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere.
Mr. Trump is close with Mr. Mullin, a Republican, and speaks with him regularly. Mr. Mullin said that Ms. Noem had “done the best that she could do under the circumstances,” but that he hoped to learn from her tenure and “build off things that didn’t quite go as planned.” Mr. Trump said Ms. Noem would remain in her current role until March 31. She thanked him in her own social media post.
The immediate catalyst for Ms. Noem’s firing appeared to be her answers during two congressional hearings this week, particularly her under-threat-of-perjury statements that Mr. Trump had approved of tens of millions of dollars of government ads in which she was prominently featured. Mr. Trump denied that to Reuters on Thursday, saying, “I never knew anything about it.”
Mr. Trump was shown clips of her answers before a Senate panel and was angry that she blamed him for the contentious spots, according to a person with knowledge of what happened who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The ads were part of a $200 million-plus government-funded campaign that included a subcontractor run by the husband of Ms. Noem’s now-former spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin.
The uproar over the ads came as recent Wall Street Journal articles detailed Ms. Noem’s spending decisions — on private jets, including one with a bedroom and only 18 seats that she said would be used for migrant flights — and an inspector general told Congress that she had “systematically obstructed” his office’s work.
But Ms. Noem had presided over a long string of controversies and a department with low morale. The makings of her ouster had been apparent for months. Her demise became an open question amid a national outcry prompted by bystander videos of the killing of Alex Pretti, a registered nurse protesting immigration crackdowns in Minneapolis, by federal immigration agents on Jan. 24.
Her response to his death called attention to the Trump administration’s increasingly violent tactics with people protesting the immigration efforts, and brought to the forefront questions about Ms. Noem’s leadership of the department, which oversees everything from cybersecurity to natural disaster response to the Secret Service.
Ms. Noem, who was an aggressive voice for the administration’s immigration crackdowns, worked closely with Stephen Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers and the architect of his restrictionist immigration policies. She is only the second high-level official to be ousted — and the first cabinet member — in Mr. Trump’s second term.
Mr. Trump hated the headlines around the constant departures and dismissals in his first administration. And there were a string of damaging interviews or books from people who left or were fired and felt mistreated by Mr. Trump.
Michael Waltz, the former national security adviser and the only other top-level official removed from a job in Mr. Trump’s second term, was also given another administration role, underscoring the desire to keep anyone who might be disaffected inside the tent.
The president’s advisers sought to avoid major changes until after the first year of his term, but Ms. Noem was seen inside the administration as a likely target for dismissal as 2026 approached.
The abrupt change comes as the Department of Homeland Security is in the third week of a shutdown, with Democrats refusing to approve more funds without new curbs on immigration enforcement agents.
As Congress was negotiating over the shutdown last month, Republican senators signaled to Democrats that they believed the White House was getting ready to push Ms. Noem out, according to people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. The Republicans hoped that the leadership change might convince a core group of moderate Democrats to agree to fund the department.
But Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the House and Senate Democratic minority leaders, said that Ms. Noem’s ouster would not ease their party’s demands. “This is a problem of policy, not personnel,” Mr. Schumer said. “The rot is deep. No one person can straighten this up.”
Under Ms. Noem, the agency has been plagued by turmoil. Senior Trump administration officials long had questioned her behavior, from the $3,000 she was carrying in her purse when it was stolen at the Capital Burger last April to her taking up residence in a Coast Guard commandant home at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. Officials also questioned her use of expensive private jets.
There were her clashes with Tom Homan, the Trump border czar. There was the immense power she was said to have given Corey Lewandowski, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s and a special government employee who was nonetheless her most senior adviser. Among other things, Mr. Lewandowski was reported to have signed off on federal contracts for the well-funded agency. Some agency officials privately said it created a bottleneck on approvals, as well as a climate of fear. Mr. Lewandowski was said to have a quick temper.
Ms. Noem this week denied that Mr. Lewandowski had signed off on contracts. When she was asked if she had a sexual relationship with him during a House hearing on Wednesday, she responded that she was “shocked that we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage.”
There were the tactics of Customs and Border Protection agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers carrying out Mr. Trump’s mass deportation effort. Mr. Trump was sometimes unhappy about those tactics, specifically raids at work sites.
After a raid on a Hyundai facility in Georgia last year, in which agents detained hundreds of South Korean citizens on hand to help build a new battery plant, Mr. Trump told Ms. Noem and other top immigration officials to use more “common sense” with deportation raids, according to a White House official familiar with the matter.
After Ms. Noem’s appearance before the Senate panel on Tuesday, during which Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, pressed her on the ad campaign, he told reporters that he had spoken with White House officials before the hearing to let them know he would be aggressive.
Mr. Kennedy asked Ms. Noem whether Mr. Trump had approved of the $200 million-plus government ad campaign in which she was prominently featured. “The president tasked me with getting the message out to the country,” she replied.
Mr. Kennedy was plainly skeptical, asking if Mr. Trump had signed off before the ads aired. She responded: “We had that conversation, yes, before I was put in this position and sworn in and confirmed. And since then as well.”
Pressed at a separate hearing on Wednesday about the process for awarding the contracts behind the ad campaign, Ms. Noem said that the awards went through “a competitive process,” and that no political appointees were involved.
At another point in the hearing, Mr. Kennedy asked Ms. Noem about her unfounded claims that Mr. Pretti and Renee Good — the two U.S. citizens killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis — had committed acts of domestic terrorism.
Citing an Axios report, Mr. Kennedy accused Ms. Noem of blaming those comments on Mr. Miller. Ms. Noem dismissed the report as false. (Mr. Miller, in posts on X, called Mr. Pretti “an assassin” and “a domestic terrorist.” He had posted a video of Ms. Good’s encounter with ICE officers on Jan. 7 and wrote over it, “Domestic terrorism.”)
After Mr. Pretti’s shooting, Ms. Noem immediately alleged that he had been brandishing a gun, a charge that was later undermined by an initial review of the incident.
Ms. Noem met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office after the incident, and he continued to publicly support her. But Mr. Trump empowered Mr. Homan, the border czar, to head up the operations in Minneapolis and calm the situation.
Ms. Noem’s previous decision to elevate Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, had further roiled the department.
Border Patrol officials are typically stationed at the actual borders. Mr. Bovino seemed to revel in aggressive tactics as he led operations in Chicago and Minneapolis.
His operations, while yielding many arrests, often led to lawsuits and images of agents chasing migrants in parking lots. Those images alarmed online influencers popular with Mr. Trump’s political base. Dozens of people detained were also ultimately let go.
Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who is departing his North Carolina seat, this week berated Ms. Noem for gleefully describing in her memoir shooting a disobedient dog on her farm. He reiterated his calls for her to resign.
Shortly after her ouster on Thursday, NBC News reported that she had handpicked the contractors who worked on a $100 million ad campaign to recruit ICE officers, as opposed to conducting the usual competitive process.
Madeleine Ngo contributed reporting.
Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.
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