“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” Trump said. “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”

The president was reportedly pushed to remove Noem following her performance during this week’s combative congressional hearings.

Noem has accumulated a mountain of personal and professional problems in recent months that ranged from her department’s issuance of noncompeted contracts, an alleged extramarital affair with a government employee, and her portrayal of events of two police-involved shootings in Minnesota, among other concerns that lawmakers voiced in oversight hearings this week.

Democrats, and even some Republicans, on the House and Senate judiciary committees grilled Noem on Tuesday and Wednesday for how she handled the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration authorities during immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The secretary declined one lawmaker’s proposition to apologize or rephrase how she had described both deceased activists as domestic terrorists and being involved in domestic terrorism for how they had interfered in operations. Videos of the incidents cast doubt on Noem’s description of the events.

Noem was put on the spot several times by lawmakers, including Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), over the allotment of a $220 million Department of Homeland Security contract for advertisements that prominently featured the secretary.

Trump was reported by Punchbowl News to be upset on Wednesday and Thursday over Noem’s claim on Capitol Hill that she had discussed the massive contract with him and had his support for moving forward with the expenditure.

Noem also faced questions about her relationship with Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee who advises Noem. The affair was reported to have commenced in 2019, according to a 2023 Daily Mail report, and was brought up by House Democrats on Wednesday, given Lewandowski’s personal ties to at least one company that received part of the advertising contract. During the House hearing, making matters even more awkward, she was grilled while her husband, Byron Noem, sat behind her.

Members of Congress have protested Noem’s efforts to limit visits to immigration detention centers overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid reports of abhorrent conditions inside some facilities.

In January, the Washington Examiner was first to report that Noem and Lewandowski were waging an internal campaign to force Trump’s hand-picked commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Rodney Scott, to resign because he had pushed back against the DHS’s aggressive approach to deportations and Lewandowski’s legal authority to continue working.

Sources said the lengths that the two took to push Scott toward the exit were “evil,” even forcing his top staff members to take random jobs across the department in various parts of the country to make his work unpleasant. Noem and Lewandowski were said to be eyeing Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks to replace Scott, though Scott has refused to resign.

The terminations of senior department officials, including at CBP, have continued through last week.

Late last year, the DHS mandated that Scott fire CBP’s executive assistant commissioner of enterprise services, Ntina Cooper, an award-winning government employee who personally briefed Trump on border wall plans.

A DHS-aligned source said Scott “overpromised and underdelivered” on installing the border wall quickly, saying that progress had been “incredibly slow.”

A review of border wall projects revealed that the Trump administration installed 20 miles of wall in its first year, compared to none being built in new areas of the border 30 months into the president’s first term — a dramatically faster start this time around.

Noem’s accomplishments include having presided over the department as the number of illegal immigrant arrests by Border Patrol dropped precipitously after Trump took office. CBP data show that illegal immigrant arrests at the southern border did drop to below 10,000 per month in many of the first six months of 2025, down from 100,000 to 250,000 arrests monthly under Biden. Given that the border went from a crisis state to quiet, agents have been sent nationwide to help ICE.