Kristi Noem says mass deportations will target criminals, not border areas

On By Littum

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Kristi Noem, the nominee to lead Homeland Security under President-elect Donald Trump, said Friday that mass deportations will focus on those with criminal convictions, not displacing farmworkers in border communities.

Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, also told Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., during her confirmation hearing that she would look to work respectfully with Native American tribes whose lands make up part of the nation’s southern border.

Gallego wanted assurances that dairy and farm work would not be disrupted by the next administration’s plans for mass deportations. Noem said the area of ​​the country is not in focus.

“President Trump has been very clear that his priority will be to deport criminals, those who have broken our laws and (perpetrated) violence in our communities. That will be a priority,” she said. “Having over 425,000 of them with criminal convictions in our country, that’s going to be a focus that we have to tackle right away, and that’s going to be a big one.

“In addition to that, his next priority will be those with final removal orders and focus on those individuals who have long overstayed and that there is a consequence for ignoring our federal laws.”

Noem appeared to cite crime numbers Trump touted during a Tempe campaign visit last year. The Homeland Security Department said last year that the numbers were “misinterpreted” and included 40 years of data and crimes allegedly committed in other countries. More than 400,000 such people were on the agency’s roll three months into President Joe Biden’s term, the agency has said.

During Gallego’s question-and-answer session with Noem, he asked Noem to help depoliticize the Shelter and Services program, which is meant to provide disaster relief funding but has come to include funding for migrants in major cities.

Trump and his allies have pointed to government spending to accommodate migrants, which they argue is more generous than aid to Americans. Gallego said there is a very different use of resources in border communities, such as those in Yuma, Pima and Cochise counties.

“These are very small, small towns on the border, so to have thousands of people being released becomes both burdensome security issues and just not fair to them,” Gallego said.

“We get lumped in with places like New York and Chicago in how they do their shelter programs. Our shelter programs are not the same as New York and Chicago. We don’t put people permanently in apartments or anything like that. We trying to move people off the border so they don’t become a burden on these very, very small communities.”

Noem said her hope is that the program would “no longer … facilitate an illegal invasion and your communities in Arizona would no longer have the problem of having people in your small towns and communities that you have to find out , how you are going to take care of and get them to where they want to go elsewhere in the country.”

Noem praised the Shadow Wolves program, which uses members of the Tohono O’odham tribe to help prevent human and drug trafficking along their 76 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The shadow wolf’s training capability is incredible, as you talked about,” Noem told Gallego. “When I look at that program, I want to continue to build on it and maintain in the future so that our tribes have the opportunity to have a secure border, but also that it reflects their values ​​and their culture and has their own people be part of the solution.”

Noem cited her own state’s practice of training tribal police officers at South Dakota’s expense as indicative of her experience working with tribes and facilitating public safety.