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by IANS |
New York, March 6 (IANS) US President Donald Trump has fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was caught in controversies over her handling of immigration raids and her personal life.
He named Senator Markwayne Mullin on Thursday to replace Noem, the first cabinet official to leave his administration in his second term.
It was a mighty fall for one of the most loyal and firebrand supporters of Trump, whose excesses in implementing immigration policies were seen as beginning to hurt the administration ahead of the midterm elections.
The sprawling Homeland Security Department has a portfolio ranging from immigration and emergency relief to airport security and the Coast Guard.
Adding to her woes, Congress had cut off funding for the department in mid-February, with the Democrats objecting to the way the immigration service operates, and negotiations to restore funding were floundering, affecting its operation.
Noem was considered a roadblock to a resolution of the dispute, although Senate Democratic Party leader Chuck Schumer said the change in leadership won’t make a difference.
Trump announced her dismissal and Mullin’s nomination in a post on Truth Social.
Mullin, who is a Native American, has served five terms in the House and is in his third year in the Senate.
Expectations of Mullin are that he would bring stability to the Homeland Security Department, which has been roiled by turmoil inside and controversies outside because of Noem’s flamboyant style of leadership.
“Markwayne truly gets along well with people, and knows the Wisdom and Courage required to Advance our America First Agenda”, Trump wrote.
Mullin will need the approval of the Senate to take up the office and may save the administration a bruising fight, as he is a member of the body.
Trump praised her success in stemming illegal migration and said that Noem would be appointed to the newly created post of Special Envoy for “The Shield of the Americas”, an initiative to bring together Latin American and Caribbean countries to deal with drug trafficking, illegal migration and crime.
Trump, who had fired several cabinet and other senior officials in his first term, has held back in the second term.
The only other high-ranking official fired is Mike Waltz, who was the national security adviser and was involved in an unsecured online chat group discussing security matters.
After the dismissal last year, he appointed him permanent representative to the United Nations.
Several legislators from the Republican Party had turned against Noem over the handling of immigration enforcement that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens by immigration staff in Minnesota.
Her problems came to a head on Wednesday when she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee after another grilling on Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the heated hearings, members of Congress, including those from her Republican Party, criticised her over the deaths of the two people she had labelled as “domestic terrorists”.
She refused at the Senate hearing to apologise for their deaths or the way immigration raids were carried out.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis demanded she resign.
Rumours of her relationship with her acting chief of staff, Corey Lewandowski, added to her problems.
At the House hearing, Democrat Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove bluntly asked Noem if she had “sexual relations” with Lewandowski.
She did not directly answer the question and instead said "peddling tabloid garbage” at the committee, which shocked her.
But a more serious issue that drew her directly into contention with Trump was an ad campaign reported to run to over $200 million and involved the husband of her former spokesperson.
Asked in the Senate hearing about it, she said that Trump had signed off on it.
But on Thursday, Trump denied in an interview with Reuters news agency that he had approved it.
Her dismissal came shortly after the interview was published.
Noem, 54, is the former governor of South Dakota, a state with a population of less than one million, putting her out of depth at a vast federal department.
She tried to make up for it with her style, appearing in camouflage and accompanying immigration officers on raids in uniform, giving the impression of a hands-on leader while stridently defending Trump and his policies to curb illegal migration.
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