By S.A. McCarthy
The Washington Stand
After four years of a border czar who failed to address the crisis at America’s southern border, President Donald Trump’s administration is tackling the issue personally. On Sunday, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem visited the U.S.-Mexico border along with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. “I’m at the southern border today to see firsthand what’s happening and how we can best support our border patrol agents,” the former South Dakota governor announced in a social media post from Texas. She said that under Trump’s presidency, “the days of open borders are over.”
Noem joined the CBP’s Del Rio Sector Horse Patrol unit. In 2021, under then-President Joe Biden, members of the Del Rio Horse Patrol were accused of whipping illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border. Biden and his DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, condemned the actions of the Del Rio Horse Patrol, with Biden saying, “It’s an embarrassment, but beyond an embarrassment, it is dangerous. It’s wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world, [and] it sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are.” He added, “It was horrible what you saw, to see people treated like they did, horses barely running them over, people being strapped. It’s outrageous.”
Shortly afterward, the White House announced that CBP would no longer be using horses. A subsequent DHS internal investigation found that there was no evidence to support the claims that mounted CBP officers were whipping or mistreating illegal immigrants. The controversial images seen depicted Del Rio Horse Patrol members swinging their reins. Neither Biden nor Mayorkas issued an apology. While riding with the Del Rio Horse Patrol unit Sunday, Noem commented, “Mayorkas rode OVER the Border Patrol and didn’t let them do their jobs. Today, I rode with our agents.”
Noem’s visit to Texas comes as the Lone Star State’s National Guard has been granted authority to make immigration arrests. According to a “memorandum of understanding” issued by CBP acting commissioner Pete Flores, Texas National Guard units are permitted to investigate and arrest illegal immigrants as long as they are accompanied by a DHS immigration official. Breitbart News reports that the new authority means at least 3,000 Texas National Guardsmen will join members of the U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and FBI already supplementing DHS border security efforts. This follows news that Trump has deployed thousands of active-duty U.S. military units to assist in securing the southern border.
Prior to arriving in Texas, Noem had joined Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on deportation missions in New York City. She discussed her experience in an interview Sunday. “The citizens of the United States are confident that finally, after four long years of having a president in the White House that ignored federal law and endangered their communities, that there’s a different man in charge now,” Noem commented. “There’s a man in charge who loves this country, is going to help make their communities safer. These citizens that live here are thrilled,” she added. Referring to her time in New York, she continued, “In fact, when I was in New York City earlier this week and in several cities since then, the people walking by us on the streets were thanking our officers.” She explained, “They were thanking these investigators and those that were taking these dangerous criminals out for being there, for making sure that they could walk their kids to school with a new confidence that they could get there safely and that they could do business and have their community back.”
Noem also addressed Trump’s plan to house arrested illegal immigrants at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. Last week, Trump ordered Noem and Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary Pete Hegseth to “begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay … to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” Trump continued, “Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust [other] countries to hold them… We don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.”
Responding to questions about the use of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which has been used by the U.S. in the past to imprison terrorists, Noem explained, “Due process will be followed, and having facilities at Guantanamo Bay will be an asset to us in the fact that we’ll have the capacity to continue to do there what we’ve always done.” She continued, “We’ve always had a presence of illegal immigrants there that have been detained. We’re just building out some capacity. So we appreciate the partnership of the DoD … in order to facilitate this repatriation of people back to their countries.”
“So remember that Guantanamo Bay clearly, by this president, has said that it will hold the worst of the worst, that we are going after those bad actors,” Noem continued. Again referring to ICE raids in the Big Apple, she added, “This last week, I was in New York City. We were going after people that had warrants out for their arrest on murders and rapes, assaults, gun purchases, drug trafficking.” The DHS chief noted that ICE captured one of the “ringleaders” of the violent Venezuelan Tren De Aragua gang who was trying to purchase grenades. “These are the types of individuals that we are targeting, we’re removing from communities, and that could end up having a stay at Guantanamo Bay before they are returned home to their countries to deal with,” she observed.
Noem further explained that illegal immigrants will not be held “indefinitely” at Guantanamo Bay but rather that the detention center will allow DHS to temporarily detain the most violent of captured illegal immigrants while deportation arrangements are being made. “The plan is to have a process that we follow that’s laid out in law and make sure that we’re dealing with these individuals appropriately according to what the state and the national law directs,” she said. She continued, “So we will work with Congress to make sure that we’re addressing our legal immigration laws and using Guantanamo Bay appropriately. But it is an asset that we have that we fully intend to utilize.”