By Katherine Tinsley
6:15pm PDT, Mar 10, 2025
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Homeland Security will bring on new leadership to prioritize immigration enforcement and use lie detector tests to weed out any employees who share information with journalists.
"The authorities that I have under the Department of Homeland Security are broad and extensive, and I plan to use every single one of them to make sure that we're following the law, that we are following the procedures in place to keep people safe and that we're making sure we're following through on what President [Donald] Trump has promised," Kristi Noem said on
Face the Nation.
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Kristi Noem has concerns about staffers sharing classified information with the public.
"The Department of Homeland Security is a national security agency," spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "We can, should, and will polygraph personnel."
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On Friday, March 7, Kristi Noem confirmed the agency will prosecute two "leakers of information."
Two days later, she announced the staffers "were leaking our enforcement operations that we had planned and were going to conduct in several cities and exposed vulnerabilities."
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Aside from exposing internal betrayal, Kristi Noem applauded Donald Trump's efforts in reducing the number of migrants crossing the border between the United States and Mexico.
"We've seen incredible progress as far as what we've been able to stop at the southern border since President [Donald] Trump has taken office," she told host Margaret Brennan.
"I think that progress can be built on," she added.
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While relations appeared tense between President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Kristi Noem revealed the U.S. hopes to work alongside its neighbor.
"These partnerships that we have in going after traffickers, cartels, the drug trade and also human trafficking, can be even stronger and built on in the future," she said.
"That's one of the things we've been asking for, in specific to the Mexican government, is how can we work better together to make sure we not only have the enforcement mission at the border, but south of the border and make sure we're going after these cartels," she continued.
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President Donald Trump has been using additional taxes on Mexican and Canadian goods in an attempt to "put America first" and negotiate with the two countries.
"You've seen the president name them as terrorist organizations," Kristi Noem said. "And Canada, just recently, is starting to allow us to access some of their criminal background histories that we need in order to know who's coming across our border and what they're bringing."
"So, because of his strong stance on tariffs, we're seeing them wanting to be better partners with us to keep our people safe," she added.
