Kristi Noem is out as Homeland Security Secretary, to be replaced by Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). Noem’s tenure as the leader of the expansive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been characterized by numerous problems, ranging from personality clashes and communication breakdowns to policy disputes and operational failures. Arguably, Noem’s greatest success over the past year has been securing the southern border and ending the never-ending flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S., fulfilling a key campaign promise of President Donald Trump’s. An equally important campaign promise, however, was Trump’s pledge to remove the millions of illegal immigrants who were allowed to cross the Biden administration’s open borders from the U.S. interior. In this regard, Noem’s tenure has been a failure.

To understand how DHS should proceed under new leadership, it is crucial to understand where Noem’s leadership was lacking. First and foremost, Noem has failed to deliver on the president’s deportation pledge. Headlines over the past year have warned that Trump and his immigration policy mastermind, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, have eyed setting daily arrest quotas for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, demanding thousands of illegal immigrants be apprehended day-in, day-out. Even if such quotas were to be set, Noem’s DHS has failed to meet them.

According to a report from The Daily Caller, ICE only managed to actually deport — as in, complete the removal of, not just arrest and detain — fewer than 36,000 illegal immigrants between October 1 and the end of February, a period of five months, equating to roughly 7,200 completed deportations per month. Should that trend persist, the U.S. would have succeeded in deporting fewer than 87,000 illegal immigrants by the end of 2026 and, including the approximately 675,000 deportations supposedly conducted over the course of 2025, fewer than one million illegal immigrants by the end of Trump’s second term — a far cry from the millions of deportations the president promised.

Under former President Joe Biden, anywhere from 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants were ushered into the U.S. If that damage is to be undone, the Trump administration will have to remove at least 2.5 million illegal immigrants per year. That means that deportation numbers need to be drastically increased to restore sovereignty and security to the American people.

The needed increase in deportations must be accompanied by a shift in strategy. No doubt Noem attempted to deliver on the promised deportation program, but the strategy she employed clearly was not working. What was her strategy? In short, bravado. To her credit, Noem did lead from the front and was always ready to tour the southern border, accompany ICE agents on immigration raids, and put her polished cowgirl boots on the ground in “sanctuary” cities where riots and violence broke out — and there are plenty of pictures to prove it. But that’s part of the issue: Noem was far from camera-shy. She appeared in press conferences and on cable news interviews almost as frequently as recently-retired DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Relations Tricia McLaughlin. That’s what an assistant secretary for public relations is for, though, to make the rounds on news programs, talk radio shows, and podcasts to deliver the administration’s messaging. The secretary should be crafting strategy, orchestrating operations, and managing budgets and personnel, not looking for photo-ops and screen time.

Noem also clearly brought her public profile to DHS, with ICE operations arresting headlines in addition to far too few illegal immigrants. Some of Noem’s public relations strategies were effective: ICE’s “worst of the worst” compilations, for example, showcased the dangers posed to everyday Americans by illegal immigration, highlighting murderers, child rapists, human traffickers, drug dealers, robbers, fraudsters, drunk drivers, and more ICE arrestees, and the very public push for mass arrests and deportations likely contributed to the reported two million self-deportations achieved during Trump’s first year back in office.

However, Noem’s DHS was plagued by high-profile leaks within the first few months of the second Trump administration, with insiders divulging where and when ICE raids were scheduled to take place, which not only gave illegal immigrants a heads-up but also alerted protestors and rioters, who proved to be one of the stickiest wickets Noem had to deal with. Riots in major cities like Los Angeles and Portland were followed early this year by perhaps the most significant of Noem’s fumbles, a combination of poor control over personnel, abysmal communication, and unnecessarily bombastic P.R. tactics.

Rampant fraud committed largely by Somali immigrants in Minnesota was the perfect prompt for Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale, high-profile ICE operation targeting “sanctuary” city Minneapolis. As was the case with previous ICE operations, Operation Metro Surge was met with protests and, in some cases, riots. Unlike the riots in Los Angeles, agitators in Minneapolis largely refrained from violence — no hurling cinder blocks through federal officers’ windshields or aiming fireworks at ICE agents — but insisted on impeding ICE operations.

Renee Good took this approach early in January, using her car to block ICE agents. When confronted by agents, Good accelerated her vehicle, striking an ICE officer who it just so happens had been struck and dragged by an agitator’s vehicle last year. He fired his weapon, shooting and killing Good. As public scrutiny descended upon the incident, it became increasingly clear that Good had actually struck the agent with her vehicle, although debate still continued over whether or not the move was intentional.

Just a few weeks later, Alex Pretti intervened when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents got rough with crowd control. As Pretti, who had interfered with DHS operations before and was reportedly known to agents for his antics, once again inserted himself into federal law enforcement operations, an agent pointed out that Pretti was armed. Two federal agents opened fire, shooting and killing Pretti.

The dual incidents were a perfect opportunity for the Trump administration to flip the script and demonize “sanctuary” officials, like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), for using deceptive and divisive rhetoric to whip up an angry mob and send civilians into harm’s way. Good and Pretti could have been cast as victims of left-wing indoctrination, deluded by the likes of Frey and Walz into believing that they were heroic freedom fighters for defending third-world child rapists and coming to a predictable but nevertheless tragic end. Instead, Noem framed Good and Pretti as terrorists.

True, intentionally running over federal agents with a car qualifies as an act of domestic terrorism, but it was never confirmed that Good intended to do so. She could have been hurriedly fleeing the armed agents and stepped on the gas earlier than she intended to or harder than she intended to, or perhaps she meant to brake. Who knows? Because she was killed, there was no chance of getting an answer from her, and so the smart thing to do would have been to mourn the loss of an American citizen, a mother of three, who was clearly radicalized by leftist bureaucrats.

Shooting at federal agents would also fall within the bounds of domestic terrorism, but Pretti did not shoot. In fact, he did not even draw his firearm. It was foolish to bring a gun to a tense standoff with federal agents who had spent the past year being badgered, hounded, and demonized in the public square, but it was not an overt act of domestic terrorism. But Noem branded Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists, enemies of the state, before DHS had even launched an investigation into either incident. This was hasty, at best, and monumentally stupid at worst, further jeopardizing already-waning public support and needlessly squandering an opportunity to lay the blame at the feet of the real villains: “sanctuary” officials.

Noem based her domestic terrorist claims on information she reportedly received from USBP agents on the ground, without verifying, without waiting for an investigation, and was quick to try to fault others — namely, USBP Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino and Miller — for the communication breakdown. Noem again tried to shift blame when grilled in Congress this week for a $220 million ad campaign: she quickly said that the president signed off on it.

This presents another of the issues with Noem’s leadership at DHS, what one Trump administration official characterized as “her constant feuding with the heads of other agencies, including CBP and ICE.” According to The Daily Caller, the agencies within DHS were largely fractured under Noem, with personality clashes and personnel mismanagement impeding the work of securing the border and running deportations. The outgoing Homeland Security Secretary reportedly clashed with Border Czar Tom Homan, an inveterate professional with decades of proven success in immigration enforcement, and White House officials, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who Noem’s assistant, former Trump campaign strategist Corey Lewandowski, tried to oust from Trump’s 2024 campaign, which Wiles was managing.

“It’s laughable that Kristi is trying to blame her own self-inflicted issues on someone else. The issues that led to Kristi’s replacement were a result of her own wrongdoings, not a lack of support from the White House,” one White House official said. Other insiders said that Noem’s removal from DHS was long overdue. “Anyone who’s close to the situation at all could see this coming,” one DHS insider said. “It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when,” said another.

The Daily Signal reported that DHS officials were relieved at Noem’s departure and believe that new leadership will help unify the various divisions of DHS. “I think there was kind of a sense of relief, and I think optimism,” one official said. He added that new leadership will hopefully “bring a fresh perspective, fresh change, and get us back on track and not have so much drama and distractions that get in the way of the president’s agenda.” Another official said, “I think this is a great relief that, you know, maybe there’s a chance to have one unified team at DHS working on these really high-priority presidential missions.”

Noem’s successful efforts to secure the southern border are not to be overlooked, but that job was done within the first few months of Trump’s second administration. Now, the time has come for DHS to be led by someone who will not only maintain border security but will return the agency to its mission and, crucially, follow through on the promised deportation agenda. The glitz and glam favored by Noem got in the way. A successful deportation campaign should be carried out quietly. DHS needs someone who will get the job done, not someone who will make a big show of getting the job done without actually getting the job done.

Of course, there is still fallout to deal with from Noem’s stint at DHS. Congressional Democrats, who have been holding up DHS funding for weeks, now feel empowered and emboldened to make more demands of the Trump administration. Broad swaths of the public, especially in “sanctuary” jurisdictions, have been riled up and view ICE agents as the Gestapo and USBP as the Sturmabteilung. Disappointed Trump loyalists hunger for a high-profile success to win back their trust. The three principles guiding DHS moving forward ought to be discretion, transparency, and efficiency.

ICE raids should not be high-profile. Codenames like “Operation Metro Surge” should be just that: codenames used internally, not movie marquee-sized monikers for public consumption. The folks running the DHS social media accounts are doing a great job articulating the necessity of immigration enforcement and encouraging the base, but videos of ICE operations and arrests need not be publicized. Instead of posting videos of arrests, foot chases, and the like, DHS should simply share big numbers; hopefully more than a few thousand deportations will be effected per month moving forward.

Operations also need to be streamlined. Homan is a vocal proponent of “targeted operations,” which track down and arrest those in the country illegally who have been issued final orders of removal. Immigration courts need to be strengthened and the appeals process rapidly sped up, so that more and more orders of final removal may be issued. Under Section 240(b)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), immigration judges can issue removal orders in absentia, without the illegal immigrant to be removed present. The courts need to avail themselves of this provision more liberally. Operations also must be expanded to target “got-aways,” those who evaded federal authorities when entering the country illegally and are thus significantly more difficult to track down and issue removal orders to.

The new DHS leadership should also acknowledge that arrests and detentions are costly and time-consuming. While last year’s Big Beautiful Bill superpowered DHS and ICE, handing the immigration agencies billions of dollars in funding, auxiliary measures to compel deportations ought to also be considered. Those who employ illegal immigrants should be targeted; hiring illegal immigrants ought to be a costly and risky practice, not a quick way to increase profit margins. First and foremost, offering illegal immigrants jobs incentivizes illegal immigration; thus, disincentivizing the hiring of illegal immigrants disincentivizes illegal immigration, making the trek across the border or the overstaying of a temporary visa less and less appealing. Second, American jobs ought to go to Americans, not to foreigners who violated the nation’s laws and will work for a fraction of what Americans will. Third, hiring illegal immigrants is illegal and the treachery ought to be punished. Simple measures like this will likely increase self-deportations, augmenting interior enforcement numbers.

Another issue that ought to be addressed is that of “sanctuary” jurisdictions. The new DHS leadership should attempt to broker deals with “sanctuary” jurisdictions to ensure that state and local law enforcements do their jobs, comply with federal law, and provide cover and crowd control for ICE agents conducting enforcement operations. DHS can leverage public pressure, the threat of messy operations, like the one in Minneapolis, and legal action to compel compliance. The Department of Justice (DOJ) will also play a role, particularly in the threat of legal action, and should identify friendly courts and judges to bring lawsuits before. High-profile concessions from “sanctuary” leaders would be a win for the base and could easily be followed by low-profile operations.

Noem’s removal as DHS chief offers the incoming leadership many opportunities to learn from her mistakes, correct course, and carry out the agenda that the American people elected Trump to enact. The threat to American sovereignty, security, and identity has rarely been greater. The watchwords must be discretion, transparency, and efficiency. The nation depends upon it.