Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem heads to Capitol Hill Tuesday to face lawmakers demanding she resign, be fired or impeached.
Her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee comes as members of both parties criticize her handling of the Trump administration’s immigration operations throughout the country. Some Democrats have called for her to face impeachment.
Her testimony has been in the works for months. Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had been seeking her appearance to conduct routine oversight of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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But it wasn’t until after the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good during immigration operations in Minneapolis that Noem agreed to testify.
Last month, President Donald Trump dismissed the idea of firing Noem.
“Why would I do that?” Trump said. “We have the strongest border in the history of our country. We have the best crime numbers we’ve ever had, going back to the year 1900 — that’s 125 years.”
Still, she is expected to face tough questioning from Senate Democrats.
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Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the top Democrat on the committee, said at the time the hearing was announced that Noem previously “refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year and now tells us that she will be available in five weeks — should she still be DHS Secretary at that time.”
“With all of the violence and deaths involving DHS, the Secretary is apparently in no hurry to account for her mismanagement of this national crisis,” Durbin said in a statement. “And she expects us to rubber stamp her record-breaking budget in the meantime.”
And there’s at least one Senate Republican on the panel, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has emerged as one of her top critics.
In January, Tillis said he would place holds on DHS nominees coming through the committee until Noem agreed to testify — a move that would block Trump’s picks for the agency.
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“I’m not going to get into impeachment,” Tillis said at the time. “I think it should be a management decision. She needs to go.”
Her testimony also comes as a partial government shutdown affecting only DHS enters its third week.
Some Republicans have expressed concern that the shutdown could hamper the agency’s ability to respond proactively to potential threats in the U.S., particularly following Trump’s weekend strikes in Iran, along with other security challenges that could arise during a prolonged closure.
The White House and Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have been negotiating for weeks, but neither side has reached a breakthrough.
The White House sent its latest offer to Democrats, which a White House official described as “serious” in a statement to Fox News Digital. Still, no agreement has been reached, and the agency remains shuttered.
“Democrats need to make a move to end the shutdown before more Americans are harmed by a lack of funding for critical services like disaster relief,” the official said.
