Trump expected to hire Kristi Noem to be secretary of homeland security

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to announce soon that he has chosen South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, sources told ABC News on Tuesday.

When news of her potential nomination was first reported by CNN earlier Tuesday, some Republicans expressed concern — but it doesn’t appear to have changed the direction of Trump’s election, the sources said. The role requires Senate approval.

As Trump’s secretary of homeland security, Noem’s biggest roles are expected to be overseeing Trump’s border policies, including the big campaign promise of “mass deportations” alongside Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. .

Noem has taken a similarly aggressive stance on immigration over the years.

In 2017, while serving as the state’s top representative in the U.S. Congress, she supported Trump’s so-called “Muslim travel ban,” saying she shares Trump’s “concerns about our ability to screen refugees — especially those from terrorist areas.”

In 2021, she opposed Afghan refugees entering South Dakota amid the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, even though she had taken in Syrian refugees under the Trump administration in 2019. Earlier this year, she used millions of dollars from the state’s emergency and disaster fund to deploy the National Guard to the US-Mexico border in Texas.

Following Trump’s election victory, Noem expressed excitement over Trump’s immigration plans and praised the president-elect’s deportation and border plans in several interviews.

In one interview on NewsNation on Friday, when asked about the potential cost of the mass deportations that Trump had promised, Noem said: “It’s going to be a big operation, and President Trump has already indicated that he wants to start by making sure that we deport the most dangerous first – the criminals, murderers, rapists who threaten the safety of our society – they will be the first on the list to go.”

On Thursday, Noem said in an interview on Newsmax that Trump’s “No. 1 priority is going to be this border. We’ve got to secure our country, and we’ve got to get the murderers and the terrorists and the rapists out of this country, and make America sure again That’s really what his goal is and I’m just so proud of him that he’s working so hard on it right away.

Noem officially endorsed Trump at a rally in South Dakota last September and has been actively campaigning for him since — including holding Trump surrogate events leading up to the critical Iowa caucuses, courting donors at fundraisers and serving as one of the ​​Trump’s surrogates at the ABC News presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

At one point earlier in this election cycle, Noem was among several names floated as possible candidates for Trump’s running mate. She had been open about her desire to join a possible second Trump administration, saying she would join the Trump ticket “in a heartbeat” and saying “I’ll help him where I can,” though she stressed , that she loves being the governor of South Dakota .

Earlier this year, she was embroiled in a series of controversies, including drawing scrutiny and a lawsuit over her social media endorsement of dental work she received from a practice in Texas.

She was also criticized for writing in her new memoir how she shot and killed her 14-month-old dog “Cricket” after it demonstrated an “aggressive personality, and was forced to admit what she called “mistakes” in her book, including claiming she once met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. That description was removed from the book, according to the publisher.

Still, Trump defended and praised her amid controversy last year, saying she’s been through “tough” days but that he likes her “a lot.”