What to know about Kristi Noem, Trump's pick for Homeland Security secretary

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, one of the biggest government agencies that will be integral to his vow to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.

The 52-year-old was born in Watertown, South Dakota, and raised on a ranch and farm outside the city. Her father died in a grain-bin collapse at the age of 49.

''When Dad passed away it was devastating for our entire family,'' she said during a 2022 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. "He was my best friend. He was the person I admired the most, the one that I cared the most what he thought of me and had planned my entire life just to grow up and to work with him and be in business with him."

She was involved in a number of family businesses before successfully running for the South Dakota House of Representatives in 2006. In 2010, she won the state's at-large House seat, and in 2018, she was elected the state's first female governor. She was reelected in 2022.

After becoming governor, Noem started working closely with Corey Lewandowski, Trump's 2016 campaign manager. Then, during the pandemic, she rose to prominence in conservative circles for resisting most government regulations to slow the spread of infections. She has since become a regular presence in Trump's political world and at one point was considered to be his running mate.

It didn't work and then on the way home, Noem wrote that when she stopped to talk to a family, Cricket got out of Noem's truck and attacked and killed some of the family's chickens. Then the dog ''whipped around to bite me,'' she wrote.

''President Trump will deport the most dangerous illegal aliens first — the murderers, rapists, and other criminals that Harris and Biden let into the country. They do not belong here, and we will not let them back in,'' Noem said in a post on X after Trump was elected.

Noem's decision was met with particularly harsh criticism because she covered most of the deployment cost with a $1 million donation from a Tennessee billionaire who has often donated to Republicans.

Noem described the U.S. border with Mexico as a ''war zone'' when she sent the troops there, saying they'd be on the front lines of stopping drug smugglers and human traffickers. But records from the Guard painted a more nuanced picture of their mission.

The Oglala Sioux told her in 2019 that she was not welcome on the Pine Ridge reservation after she led efforts to pass a state law targeting demonstrations such as those in neighboring North Dakota that plagued the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

''I am hereby notifying you that you are not welcome to visit our homelands,'' Oglala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner said in a letter to Noem. He told Noem that if she ignored the directive ''we will have no choice but to banish you'' from the reservation.

The governor also has clashed with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe over Fourth of July fireworks displays at Mount Rushmore. The tribe has opposed the fireworks displays at a monument they view as a desecration of land violently stolen from them decades ago.

Days later, Noem summoned the state employee who ran the agency, the woman's direct supervisor and the state labor secretary to her office for a meeting with her daughter. Four months later, Noem's daughter got the certification.

Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, one of the biggest government agencies that will be integral to his vow to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.

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