WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he’s replacing his embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and will nominate in her place Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin.
Trump made the announcement on social media on Thursday, two days after Noem faced a grilling on Capitol Hill from GOP members as well as Democrats.
Trump says he’ll make Noem a “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” a new security initiative that he said would focus on the Western Hemisphere.
In a post on X, Noem thanked Trump for her new role and said she looked forward to working with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “dismantle cartels that have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren.”
Noem’s ouster as head of the department that oversees Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was celebrated by local officials and activists, who said good riddance to the woman who oversaw unprecedented immigration raids in the Chicago area last fall and early winter.
But even as they celebrated, they warned that the Trump administration is likely to continue aggressive actions in the coming years.
“Hey Kristi Noem, don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a video posted to social media immediately after her firing. “Here’s your legacy: corruption and chaos. Parents and children tear gassed. Moms and nurses — U.S. citizens getting shot in the face. Now that you’re gone, don’t think you get to just walk away. I guarantee you, you will still be held accountable.”
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Kristi Noem. pic.twitter.com/p6SPcRztFw
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) March 5, 2026
One of the citizens shot during those operations was Marimar Martinez, a schoolteacher who had been on her way to drop off a basket of donations when she joined a car caravan of Operation Midway Blitz protesters tailing agents through Brighton Park.
Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum shot Martinez five times and later bragged about it in a series of bombshell text messages to fellow agents, saying he was up for another round of “(expletive) around and find out.”
Martinez, who was charged with assaulting federal agents following the shooting, told members of Congress last month she wants an apology from the government for labeling her as a domestic terrorist. Prosecutors dismissed the charges against her in November in what was arguably the highest-profile case against any U.S. citizen swept up in Chicago’s “blitz” to disintegrate under judicial scrutiny.
Yet on Tuesday, months after the case fell apart, Noem told members of Congress she was not familiar with the circumstances of the shooting and didn’t know whether Exum was still on the job. Martinez was in the room, standing a few rows behind her.
Chris Parente, Martinez’s attorney, said his client was “pleased that there is still some level of accountability remaining for our government officials who blindly push out false narratives without any due diligence or investigation of the truth.”
“Everyone involved in the spreading of lies about Marimar Martinez is out of their job,” Parente said, nodding to recently dismissed Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin and the now-reassigned Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.
Noem is the first Cabinet secretary to leave during Trump’s second term. Noem’s departure caps a tumultuous tenure overseeing immigration enforcement tactics that have been met with protests and lawsuits.
Noem’s tenure looked increasingly at risk after hearings in Congress this week where she faced rare but blistering criticism from Republican lawmakers.
Noem has faced waves of criticism as she’s overseen Trump’s immigration crackdown, especially since the shooting deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of immigration enforcement officers.
Mayor Brandon Johnson cheered on the end of her tenure, one marked by what he described as “brazen corruption” that jeopardized his constituents’ human rights.
“In Kristi Noem’s time fleecing the American people with her derelict … leadership at DHS, Chicago has withstood targeted attacks by DHS and the federal agents under its purview,” the mayor wrote. “She will not be missed in Chicago.”
In September, a federal agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas-González during a traffic stop. Officials alleged that Villegas-González was fleeing from ICE in west suburban Franklin Park and had “refused to follow law enforcement commands and drove his car” at officers, striking one of the ICE agents and dragging him “a significant distance.”
“Fearing for his life, the officer discharged his firearm and struck the subject,” the statement continued.
But body-camera footage from the Franklin Park Police Department shows that the agents, one of whom was originally described as critically injured, described their bloody hands and knees to responding police officers as “nothing major” just minutes after the shooting.
Frustrations over Noem’s execution of the Republican president’s hard-line immigration agenda — particularly her leadership after the shooting deaths of the two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis — as well as her handling of disaster response, paved the way for her downfall. She faced blistering criticism from Democrats, and some Republicans, in Congress hearings this week over those issues and others.
The former South Dakota governor was also criticized over the way her department has spent billions of dollars allocated to it by Congress. Another particular point of scrutiny was a $220 million ad campaign featuring Noem that encouraged people in the country illegally to leave voluntarily.
Noem told lawmakers that Trump was aware of the campaign in advance, but Trump disputed that in an interview Thursday with Reuters, saying he did not sign off on the ad campaign.
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, who filed long-shot articles of impeachment against Noem, called her “an incompetent leader who enriched her friends and unleashed her Gestapo agents with no regard for the law or human life.” Campaigning in the March 17 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on articles of impeachment she filed against Noem in January, Kelly claimed a share of the credit for her firing.
Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg, a co-sponsor of Kelly’s impeachment resolution and one of her competitors in the Senate primary, said in a statement that Noem’s ouster “does not erase the abuses that occurred on her watch in the Trump administration.”
The third top competitor in the Senate race, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, had a succinct message for Noem in a brief video on social media: “Just heard Kristi Noem got fired. Bye, Felicia.”
Noem made waves around the country and in Chicago for her department’s aggressive, at times illegal conduct in handling deportation proceedings. She also faced scrutiny for untrue statements about her agency’s conduct.
In one instance, Noem claimed that no United States citizens have been caught up in Trump administration immigration raids. But that is false, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said in a six-page letter to Noem that demanded answers about the department’s detention of U.S. citizens and cited Chicago Tribune reporting.
Aside from immigration, Noem also faced criticism — including from Republicans — over the pace of emergency funding approved through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and for the Trump administration’s response to disasters.
Mullin would need to be confirmed by the Senate, but under a federal law governing executive branch vacancies, he would be allowed to serve as an acting Homeland Security secretary as long as his nomination is formally pending.
Ed Yohnka, of the Illinois chapter of American Civil Liberties Union, cheered Noem’s dismissal but said a change in personnel was “not enough.”
While Noem had been the face of “reckless” policies and practices that had consequences for civil rights and liberties of Chicagoans and many others across the country, Yohnka was skeptical that anything besides direct orders from the White House would create a different outcome for future rounds of immigration enforcement.
“We need change in the policies of the Trump administration, starting with ending the use of heavily armed masked forces to enforce civil immigration law,” he said.
And he said Chicago and Illinois residents should continue to be prepared for a possible return of federal agents this spring, and encouraged them to build on the neighborhood-level activism and information networks that proliferated through the city and suburbs this fall.
“Look at the success that was built last time from neighbors finding ways to protect other neighbors,” he said.
Representatives of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which helped spearhead much of that local organizing, similarly cheered Noem’s dismissal but said many of the policies and practices she’d presided over had predated her and would persist after she left the department.
“No matter who is appointed to lead DHS, Trump will continue separating families, spreading fear in our communities, and outright lying to the public,” the group said in a statement. “ICIRR will continue organizing, regardless of who leads this agency, to end detentions, stop deportations, and abolish ICE.”
In May, a few months before Operation Midway Blitz, Noem visited Springfield to blast Illinois’ sanctuary policies, holding a news conference on a street corner near where 24-year-old Emma Shafer, a popular community organizer in town, was stabbed to death about two years earlier. Authorities say Shafer was killed by an ex-boyfriend who was in the country without legal permission. He has since been arrested and charged with the crime.
During her visit, Noem used Shafer’s death as a political cudgel, drawing protests and even opposition from Shafer’s family, who said in a statement that day that Noem’s reference of the killing “was a nightmare for so many in our community.”
Francesca Butler, a close friend of Shafer’s, said Thursday she’s glad that Noem can no longer go “on this campaign of terror, when, you know, it’s her job or it’s supposed to be her job to prevent that.” But Butler remains wary of whoever replaces Noem.
“She, herself, is a problem, right?” Butler said. “But she’s also clearly a symptom of a very sick society that we’re in and we need to come together to reject that.”
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner, Alice Yin, Olivia Olander, Daniel Petrella and Jason Meisner and The Associated Press contributed.
