Kristi Noem is out. DHS veterans say they still have worries

Javad Khazaeli recalls the day workers came to his federal building in 2003 and switched all the signs to the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He was a young intelligence analyst, excited to be embedded with the special agents who did national security investigations under the newly minted Department of Homeland Security. ICE was a smaller agency then, mostly doing terrorism investigations and arresting three or four people per week, he said.

Today, the agency he knew is hardly recognizable.

Before President Donald Trump removed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on March 5, she led a 13-month transformation of the department, with White House backing, that's dented public support for the agency.

"It went from a national security agency to the president's personal Gestapo," said Khazaeli, who now practices immigration and civil rights law. Even with Noem out, he said, "I don't understand how this agency survives without a gutting of everyone who was hired and anyone who has been in a leadership position."

Calls for the Department of Homeland Security to be overhauled or dismantled have been around almost as long as the department itself.

Created in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, the consolidation of customs, immigration, airport security and emergency management functions under a single banner was seen as necessary to vet foreigners and protect the country from another deadly attack. Skeptics questioned whether the department's vast new powers could someday be turned inward, against the American people.

Khazaeli and other DHS veterans who helped coalesce the department in the wake of 9/11 say they are watching the department's shift to aggressive immigration enforcement with alarm – for the public trust, public safety and the future of the agency they helped build.

"They have really converted the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Immigration, which is not what it was set up to be," said former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who led the department between 2009 and 2013 under the Obama administration.

USA TODAY spoke with half a dozen Homeland Security veterans who worked for or had a hand in building the department. They applaud the administration's achievements on border security, which include reducing illegal crossings to fewer than 9,000 per month from tens of thousands in the last year of the Biden administration. None are advocating for ICE to be abolished or DHS dismantled. But they worry that the administration's singular focus on deporting millions of people could lead to the agency's downfall.

They cite fundamental shifts in the mission, policies and culture over the past year – fully endorsed and often led by the White House – that are unlikely to change under Trump's new pick for DHS secretary, U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma.

DHS didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

In annoucing Noem's removal, Trump said on social media that Mullin would work "tirelessly to Keep our Border Secure, Stop Migrant Crime, Murderers, and other Criminals from illegally entering our Country, End the Scourge of Illegal Drugs and, MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN."

Among the changes that concern the DHS veterans: officers masking in public; thousands of federal agents redirected to immigration enforcement; the rapid hiring of roughly 10,000 new ICE officers; the condensed ICE training academy; the use of administrative, rather than judicial, warrants to enter homes, risking Fourth Amendment violations; and mandatory detention for tens of thousands of immigrants.

"The question is, what are the American people getting out of this?" Napolitano asked. "Are we safer and more secure?

"I would suggest that not only do we not feel safer or more secure," she said, "we feel less safe and less secure."

Noem had high-profile visibility as secretary

Noem, a former South Dakota governor, had a high-profile presence at the top of the Department of Homeland Security. She made regular appearances on Fox News and other television networks, appeared in elaborate social media videos publicizing enforcement and took a combative approach during congressional hearings.

In her media appearances, she wore a bulletproof vest before a pre-dawn ICE raid; donned a Border Patrol cap as she painted the border wall black; and rode on horseback, Mount Rushmore in the background, telling immigrants to self-deport.

In hearings before the Senate and House judiciary committees on March 3 and 4, Noem said the publicity helped drive more than 2 million immigrants to self-deport in the past year.

But the mass deportation promise that energized voters during Trump's campaign has unnerved a growing number of Americans, according to multiple recent polls.

The tactics immigration officers have used across the United States – chasing farmworkers through fields, tackling a business owner in his parking lot, detaining citizens – have contributed to the loss of support. So has the garb: Federal law enforcement officers conducting immigration enforcement have been heavily armed, decked in camouflage and wearing masks to cover their faces.

Tensions boiled over in Minneapolis, where federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Noem described their protest actions as "domestic terrorism" when they were fatally shot. In the aftermath of both shootings, videos emerged contradicting Noem's early declarations about the cases.

Pressed during the oversight hearings to apologize, she refused.

Polls in the wake of the shootings showed more than 6 in 10 Americans believe the administration has "gone too far" in immigration enforcement, a reversal of election-year surveys that showed strong support for Trump's mass deportation agenda.

"I don't think they anticipated pushback from the American public," said Michael DeBruhl, who served in the U.S. Border Patrol for nearly three decades, including in the agency's highly selective Border Patrol Tactical Unit and in agency leadership in Washington, DC.

"The majority wanted increased enforcement in the immigration realm, but it matters how you do that," he said. "Successful policing requires a degree of trust."

Even in the days leading up to her ouster by the president, Noem had supporters among key Republican lawmakers. U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the House Judiciary committee, celebrated the increased border security under the Trump administration. Republican members of the House and Senate judiciary committees lauded her performance.

Sprawling federal department

Under DHS are 16 separate agencies including the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Protection, along with TSA airport security and disaster relief.

By last September, the Trump administration had reassigned roughly 15,000 federal officers to immigration enforcement, according to data obtained by the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank.

Among them were 6,800 homeland security investigators; 2,800 FBI agents; more than 2,100 Drug Enforcement Administration agents, according to Cato – all redirected from their duties to investigate serious criminal activity.

The new DHS has "turned the focus from the true external threats to seeing foreigners as threats and invaders," said Patrick Comey, who served ICE and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for more than three decades.

"Calling everybody who crossed the border illegally a 'criminal alien' isn't how we used to define it," Comey said. That label required someone being convicted of a "crime of moral turpitude," he said, something serious, or a drug violation.

"Instead of going after the worst of the criminal aliens we have to go after the 'worst of the worst,'" he said. "What the hell does that mean? Most of the people getting arrested aren't drug traffickers or convicted of violent felonies."

Trump dedicated part of his February State of the Union address to descriptions of fraud, violence and killings committed by people in the country illegally – language Noem repeatedly used to justify surge operations in American cities.

Deploying 3,000 federal agents to Minneapolis, a city with a police force of 600 officers, without warning or local collaboration was – from a law enforcement operations perspective – "terribly planned," Napolitano said.

"Interior enforcement is an important part of the immigration mission DHS has, but where I think the administration has gone off the rails is by not distinguishing amongst the immigrant population," Napolitano said.

"A large percentage of the people being thrown in detention haven’t committed any other crime," she added. "They have applications pending, arguments for legal status."

Stricter enforcement of immigration law

Behind the scenes, the Trump administration has also fortified DHS with muscular powers to enforce existing immigration laws.

The administration has revoked legal status from millions of immigrants and redefined who is considered a "criminal illegal alien" to include people who crossed the border without permission and who have no criminal record. A reinterpretation of legal doctrine encourages U.S. prosecutors to charge undocumented immigrants with illegal entry charges, even in states far from the border.

Even the agency that grants immigration benefits like green cards is now also conducting enforcement, hiring agents with guns and badges, the department announced last year. Adjudicators for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were rebranded "homeland defenders;" online recruitment information advertises "no degree needed." The agency's hotline now encourages people who may have a pending immigration case to "self-deport."

Homeland Security is dramatically expanding its physical footprint with new funding from Congress, buying seven deportation jets and purchasing 10 warehouses it plans to convert to immigration detention centers. Three warehouses in Socorro, Texas, bought by DHS are slated to hold 8,500 people – more than any federal prison.

Senate Democrats on March 6 were still withholding annual funding for DHS, demanding changes to immigration enforcement tactics, provoking a partial shutdown.

But the department's immigration enforcement effort isn't short on cash. Congress gave DHS $170 billion in additional money to achieve the president's mass deportation goal, money that must be spent over the next three years.

Khazaeli, the former ICE intelligence analyst and prosecutor, said though Trump often underscores his commitment to national security, the moves within DHS suggest an intense focus on immigration enforcement at the expense of other priorities.

"The thing that bothers me the most is the abandonment of the national security mission, the reallocation of assets away from national security to the persecution of immigrants of all faiths and colors regardless of their threat," Khazaeli said.

"We should get rid of violent criminals," he said. "The average American who isn't a white supremacist will say, 'We want the good people to stay, we want the bad people to go.'"

Comey said Noem's ouster isn't sufficient to turn DHS around. "She was clearly following the mandate of the administration," he said.

Lauren Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY and can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at laurenvillagran.57.