Kristi Noem’s departure from the DHS won’t mean an end to agency’s violent tactics

Some of the most ostentatious enforcers of Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda have left or been forced out of the administration in recent weeks.

In January, the president withdrew Greg Bovino – the border patrol commander who was the face of the immigration crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis – from his frontline role. Top Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin – who had become notorious for her bombastic and blatantly false press statements – left her role last month. And on Thursday, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, was fired.

Yet human rights advocates and organizers across the US don’t expect the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics to change on the ground.

“We forced the Trump administration’s hand in firing Kristi Noem,” said Erika Zurawski, a co-founder of Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (Mirac), a group that helped organize large-scale protests against the administration’s immigration operation in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Public outcry against the so-called Operation Metro Surge, which was helmed by Noem and resulted in the killing of two US citizens and the seemingly indiscriminate snatching of immigrants off city streets, undoubtedly led to the secretary’s downfall, she said.

“This was a win for the people. Except the problem is, we’re not able to celebrate the win, because the violence is still continuing, the kidnappings are continuing.”

Hundreds of immigration agents remained in Minnesota weeks after the administration announced a drawdown. Even as Democrats in Congress attempted to block DHS funding – demanding restrictions on how immigration agents operate – enforcement continued around the country. At least two immigrants have recently died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

The National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group, called the Trump administration’s decision to replace Noem with hardline Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin “the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig”.

“I hope that neither the American public nor our elected officials are distracted by today’s personnel change at the top of DHS, or the internal changes that preceded it,” said Faisal Al-Juburi of Raíces, a non-profit legal services and advocacy organization. “Mass deportation is still central to the Trump administration’s agenda. That has not changed, and it is why we have every reason to believe interior [immigration] enforcement will continue to target people on the basis of race, and regardless of status, throughout our American cities.”

In congressional hearings that preceded Noem’s ouster, it became clear that lawmakers – including Republicans who overarchingly supported Trump’s immigration agenda – had grown weary of Noem’s theatrical approach to her role, especially as a majority of Americans appeared not to be impressed by the Noem’s penchant for pageantry.

“We’re beginning to get the ⁠American people to think that deporting people is wrong,” said the retiring senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina at a congressional hearing on Noem’s tenure this week. “It’s the exact opposite. The way you’re going about deporting them is wrong.”

This was a woman who travelled to El Salvador to pose in front of inmates at a sprawling megaprison where the DHS had sent more than 200 Venezuelans migrants in breach of a federal judge’s directive. She toured the US border on horseback and on ATV, had cameras follow her as she tagged along on violent immigration raids. In the Florida Everglades, she appeared, camera-ready, to gleefully show off the brutality of a detention camp called “Alligator Alcatraz”.

“Noem brought public performance and spectacle to her tenure as secretary of homeland security. That is what distinguishes her from her predecessors,” said Al-Juburi.

But it’s unclear that Noem’s firing – or any of the other personnel changes – means that the administration will drop the spectacle. Mullin, Al-Juburi noted, is a former MMA fighter who gained a national spotlight after threatening the president of the Teamsters during a congressional hearing.

Trump’s immigration agenda was the center of his presidential campaign, and throughout his second term his administration has promoted even its most extreme immigration actions openly – through social media memes and press releases alike.

It has dropped the pretenses it put up in his first term, when officials insisted for a year that family separations weren’t happening at the border – even as journalists and advocates began raising alarm that hundreds of migrant children were being forcibly separated from their parents.

This time, the administration has played up its brutality against immigrant communities.

Democratic leaders in Congress have continued to hold out on funding the DHS, demanding reforms including requirements that immigration agents wear identification and body cameras, and cease operating near schools, medical facilities, churches, polling stations, childcare facilities and courts.

But the agency is still expected to use its ballooning budget to acquire warehouses to transform into detention centers, and to mobilize a slate of surveillance technologies against immigrants and American citizens. The administration has already gutted the agency’s watchdogs.

“By its very design, DHS is shielded from scrutiny and unchecked by oversight” said Al-Juburi. “That was true yesterday. It is true today. It will be true tomorrow.”