Jeffries welcomes Noem’s ouster but warns it won’t affect DHS funding fight

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Thursday welcomed the ouster of Kristi Noem from atop the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but warned that the leadership shakeup won’t soften the Democrats’ demands for reforms at the agency. 

“A change in personnel is not sufficient. We need a change in policy,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol. 

A short time earlier, President Trump announced that he was removing the embattled Noem, who has come under fire from lawmakers in both parties for her management of DHS, and would replace her with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a close ally of the president.

Mullin is a former member of the House, who was part of the same freshman clash as Jeffries and served alongside the Democratic leader for five terms before Mullin jumped to the Senate in 2023.

Jeffries on Thursday said his move to DHS is “welcome,” though he declined to lend any insights into his relationship with his former House colleague. 

Instead, Jeffries celebrated Noem’s removal, which Democrats have endorsed for months over her handling of Trump’s deportation surge in blue cities around the country. Those calls grew much more pronounced in January, following the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis. 

“Kristi Noem is gone,” Jeffries said. “Good riddance. She was a disaster.” 

Jeffries quickly emphasized that the roster change at DHS will not affect the Democrats’ insistence on new rules governing federal immigration officers as a condition of reopening the department, which has been shuttered since Feb. 14. 

Those reforms include new body camera mandates, a ban on facemasks and new warrant requirements surrounding home invasions and arrests. 

“These are the types of policy changes that are going to be necessary to move us forward to ensure that ICE actually conducts itself like every other law enforcement agency in the country,” Jeffries said. “That’s our fundamental demand.”

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