WASHINGTON: Kristi Noem, who oversaw US President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown and faced bipartisan criticism in hearings this week, will leave her role as homeland security chief at the end of the month.

Trump tapped Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to replace her, a move that would require Senate confirmation.

Noem, a former governor of South Dakota, became one of Trump’s most high-profile cabinet secretaries with social media posts that portrayed immigrants in harsh terms, highlighting cases of alleged criminal offenders and using vitriolic language. She faced criticism in January when she quickly labelled two US citizens fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis as committing “domestic terrorism”.

Videos that emerged after the deaths undercut the assertion by Noem and other Trump officials that the two deceased - Renee Good and Alex Pretti - were violent aggressors. The backlash for deaths led the Trump administration to move to a more targeted approach to immigration enforcement in Minnesota after months of sweeps through cities that led to violent clashes with residents opposing the crackdown.

Democrats in the House of Representatives moved to impeach Noem and at least two Republicans in Congress called for her to lose her job after the incidents. During congressional hearings, Democrats and some Republicans criticised Noem for her approach to the immigration crackdown and management of DHS, including concern over a $220 million ad campaign that heavily featured Noem.

Trump said on Thursday that he did not sign off on the ad campaign.

“I never knew anything about it,” he said in a phone interview.

The ads prominently featured Noem, including a scene of her on horseback at Mount Rushmore in her home state of South Dakota.

In one of the congressional hearings this week, Senator John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, asked Noem if Trump had approved the commercials.

“The president approved ahead of time you spending $220m running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently?” Kennedy asked Noem.

“Yes, sir. We went through the legal processes, did it correctly,” she replied.

Under Noem’s leadership, masked immigration agents surged into Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, scouring neighbourhoods and Home Depot parking lots in search of possible immigration offenders.

Mullin spent a decade in the House of Representatives before becoming a senator in 2023.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2026