(Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to function the subsequent homeland safety secretary, selecting a staunch ally who has little expertise on the nationwide safety stage.
Noem, as soon as seen as a potential operating mate for fellow Republican Trump, is at the moment serving her second four-year time period as governor after a landslide reelection victory in 2022. She rose to nationwide prominence after refusing to impose a statewide masks mandate throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 260,000-person U.S. Division of Homeland Safety has a sprawling mission that features border safety, countering terrorist threats and cyber safety.
“Kristi has been very strong on Border Security. She was the first Governor to send National Guard Soldiers to help Texas fight the Biden Border Crisis, and they were sent a total of eight times,” Trump mentioned in a press release.
He mentioned Noem would work intently together with his “border czar,” Tom Homan. In an X publish, Noem mentioned she seemed ahead to working with Homan to “make America SAFE again.”
“With Donald Trump, we will secure the border and restore safety to American communities so families will again have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream,” she mentioned.
Trump centered intensely on border safety throughout his marketing campaign to recapture the White Home, sharply criticizing excessive ranges of unlawful immigration below Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump, who gained decisively towards Harris in final week’s election, has vowed mass deportations and different immigration restrictions starting on his first day in workplace.
Noem made a number of journeys in recent times to the U.S.-Mexico border, which she referred to as a “war zone” in January.
As governor of South Dakota, which is nearer to Canada than Mexico, Noem deployed dozens of Nationwide Guard troops to help the Republican-led state of Texas with border safety in recent times, together with one controversial deployment in 2021 funded by a Republican billionaire.
Noem confronted widespread backlash in April when she wrote in a memoir that she had shot to demise an “untrainable” canine that she “hated” on her household farm. Some Trump advisers mentioned they believed Noem’s inventory fell within the former president’s eyes after that, at a time when she was a vice presidential contender.
Along with Trump’s appointment on Monday of Homan, a former prime immigration enforcement official, as his administration’s “border czar,” Trump is anticipated to call Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s first-term immigration agenda, as White Home deputy chief of workers for coverage.
