Stu Whitney / South Dakota News Watch
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s rise to secretary of the Department of Homeland Security would put her in charge of a sprawling federal network of 22 agencies and 260,000 employees tasked with keeping the United States safe from outside threats.
Whether she’s prepared for that position depends on whom you ask, and she still needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
But most everyone agrees her potential role in President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet comes at a pivotal time in the country’s approach to illegal immigration and national security.
Jeh Johnson, who served as Homeland Security secretary under President Barack Obama from 2013-17, told News Watch that he wishes the South Dakota Republican success “in promoting the department’s missions and its people.”
But Johnson, former general counsel of the Department of Defense, added a note of caution as Noem prepares to join an administration that has vowed to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants in the country, facing likely legislative and legal hurdles along the way.
“I fear she will be placed in the untenable position of having to publicly defend the Trump Administration’s most controversial and harshest immigration enforcement policies,” Johnson told News Watch. “I suspect there will be many days when she wishes she were back in South Dakota.”
Serving as governor is ‘training ground’
The Department of Homeland Security, formed in response to the 9/11 attacks of 2001, began operations in 2003 and is the third-largest Cabinet department behind the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs.
Though it is largely associated with immigration oversight through Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security also oversees cybersecurity and disaster response, as well as the Secret Service and Coast Guard.
John Sandweg, who served as acting director of ICE from 2013-14, said Noem’s experience as governor could help prepare her for coordinating the various agencies and supervising the budget, though DHS has a significantly larger budget and workforce than the state of South Dakota.
Sandweg noted that two other governors, Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania (2003-05) and Janet Napolitano of Arizona (2009-13) have served as Homeland Security secretary, managing a budget that reached $108 billion for fiscal year 2025, of which $62 billion is net discretionary funding.
“Managing an executive function and one that can be highly political (as governor) is a unique background that can serve as training ground to being secretary, dealing with a state Legislature instead of Congress,” said Sandweg, a national security lawyer who also served as acting DHS general counsel.
Texas governor praises Noem choice
Noem, who didn’t respond to interview requests for this story, has said that she asked Trump for the Homeland Security position and looks forward to “discussing our nation’s security challenges and my commitment to addressing them head-on” during Senate confirmation hearings.
In a recent poll conducted by Echelon Insights, 27% of respondents either strongly or somewhat supported Noem as the DHS nominee, compared to 26% who strongly or somewhat oppose the choice.
That net approval of plus-1 was third-lowest of eight high-profile Trump Cabinet picks, ahead of only Matt Gaetz for attorney general (negative-11) and Pete Hegseth for secretary of Defense (negative-2).
Noem has deployed South Dakota National Guard troops to the Southern border five times during her administration. In 2021, she drew criticism for accepting a $1 million donation from a Republican donor to help cover the cost of a two-month deployment of 48 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas.
Noem has also made several trips to the border to support the enforcement efforts of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who praised her on the social media site X the day she was nominated as a “border hawk who has worked with me to secure the Texas border.”
Sandweg, a lawyer in Washington specializing in DHS compliance and immigration, said that Noem’s new role will likely be an eye-opener compared to her past brushes with border security as an Upper Midwest governor without federal oversight.
“I think she’ll find that she has a lot to learn about border security,” Sandweg told News Watch. “(Homeland Security) is a different type of responsibility in which she’s constrained in ways she wasn’t in the past by federal law, budgetary concerns and international diplomacy.”
Clashes with White House possible
Trump has tapped former ICE director Tom Homan to serve as his “border czar” at the White House, which could free up Noem to focus on other DHS agencies such as the Secret Service and FEMA.
The administration’s immigration strategy will also be shaped by Stephen Miller, who was hired as deputy chief of staff for policy after working on the Muslim travel ban and other hardline initiatives during Trump’s previous White House stint.
But Noem will still oversee the DHS budget, which will have to be ramped up significantly to carry out some of the deportation and enforcement policies being pushed by Trump and his team.
Trump has indicated that he plans to declare a national emergency to carry out his campaign promise of mass deportations of migrants living in the U.S. illegally, of which there are an estimated 11.7 million, according to the Center for Migration Studies based on U.S. Census Bureau data.
Finding resources for those plans could put Noem on the firing line of appropriation-based battles with Congress, where Republicans will hold a 53-47 majority in the U.S. Senate but a slimmer advantage in the U.S. House.
“Border and immigration issues tend to dominate the job, and she has the added wrinkle of having more seasoned policy and operational people at the White House,” said Sandweg, referring to Homan and Miller.
“It will be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out. It might work out very well, but you can also have personality conflicts because (Homan and Miller) will be sitting with the president every day, but yet (Noem) is the person who’s in charge and responsible for the actual border patrol agents and ICE officers executing the mission.”
She’ll also be answering to Trump, a notoriously volatile leader who saw 14 Cabinet members depart during his first four-year White House tenure, compared to three for Obama (eight years) and two for Biden (four years).
“It’s something to keep an eye on,” said Sandweg. “It’s certainly not uncommon for there to be some tension between the White House and DHS.”