Kristi Noem is Trump’s Homeland Security pick, but some South Dakota residents say she neglected her own state

CNN—As floodwaters rapidly rose around her lakefront home in South Dakota in June, Shelly Lewis barely had time to put her cat in a carrier, pack a single bag into the car, and flee for safety. By night’s end, her house was destroyed – the remains collapsed in a pile and the family’s belongings scattered throughout the lake.In the aftermath of the flood, Lewis and her McCook Lake neighbors expected their governor to come to their rescue by seeking a federal disaster declaration and deploying the National Guard to protect their properties and help with the massive recovery effort.But Kristi Noem, the state’s Republican governor, at the time a contender for Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, had other priorities. Noem delayed requesting federal disaster assistance. As for the National Guard, she had already deployed a significant contingent of guardsmen – but not to the flooded area. Rather, they were more than a thousand miles away supporting her Texas counterpart’s high-profile anti-immigration campaign along the US-Mexico border. Noem boasted of being “the first governor to send National Guard to the southern border.”“She was not here for us,” said Lewis, a longtime supporter of Noem. “This is my home. You ignored your state.”As Noem faced a growing backlash from a community left picking up the pieces, the calamity exposed a political schism: For some, the governor seemed more interested in cozying up to Trump and bolstering her MAGA credentials than in helping her own constituents.Now, with Noemtapped to runthe Department of Homeland Security in a second Trump administration, her handling of several key issues in South Dakota offers a lens into how she may manage her sprawling responsibilities at DHS. These include not only securing the border and policing immigration, but also customs enforcement and oversight of such diverse agencies as the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service. Noem also would have to juggle Trump’s promises of massive deportations with the reality that thousands of businesses, including in her own state, rely on undocumented workers to fill vacancies or do work that US citizens won’t do.Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, speaks during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024.Will Lanzoni/CNN“This is an area where the Republican Party is going to struggle,” said Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. Republican leaders “know there’s a need for [undocumented] workers.”Noem’s office did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.In interviews with CNN, a variety of South Dakotans said Noem’s commitment to Trump’s hardline immigration stance over the last few years has come at their expense. And not just flood victims. All nine Native American tribes in the state have banned her from setting foot on their lands aftershe suggestedthey were in cahoots with Mexican drug cartels.Meanwhile, farmers in South Dakota, who employ thousands of immigrant workers to tend to cows and harvest crops, nervously wonder how she would act on Trump’s promise of mass deportations.“How are they going to do that?” dairy farmer Greg Moes asked in a conversation with CNN. “Nobody will be filling the shelves. Nobody will be producing food.”‘We have to be wise’Like Shelly Lewis and other McCook Lake neighbors, Morgan Speichinger was caught off guard by the flooding. She and her husband were walking their children when they saw rising waters rolling towards their street. They rushed back to warn neighbors, then loaded what they could into a car. Her front-door Ring camera captured the water submerging their driveway within minutes.Ring camera video shows Speichinger's driveway submerged in water within minutes as residents attempt to evacuateMorgan SpeichingerThey evacuated an hour ahead of any official alerts or evacuation orders. Speichinger’s home was ruined by the flooding, which also left a nearly 15-foot-deep crater in her backyard. The waters tore through neighborhoods, damaging or destroying scores of homes.The destruction came largely as a shock to residents. Just hours earlier, Noem held a press conference where the message to McCook Lake was one of caution given volatile predictions, which Noem would later admit led to underestimating the damage. After the briefing, Noem left the state for an evening GOP fundraiser in Tennessee as McCook Lake residents found their community underwater.In conversations with half a dozen residents of McCook Lake, they expressed ire at Noem’s handling of the flooding, particularly her decisions not to deploy the state’s National Guard and to wait more than a month before seeking federal disaster assistance. For years, South Dakotans had watched Noem repeatedly authorize swift deployments to the southern border.Morgan Speichinger walks through the backyards of her neighbors' destroyed homes five months after a June 23 flood near McCook Lake in North Sioux City, South Dakota.Rebecca S. Gratz/For The Washington Post/Getty ImagesIn 2021, Noemannouncedshe would send the National Guard to Texas to “secure the border” amid a “national security crisis.” Noem ended up ordering three deployments to the southern border over the next few years – at a cost of roughly $2.7 million, according to a document of expenditures published by South Dakota Searchlight.While a significant portion of the initial deployment costs were covered by a large private donation, over the next few years taxpayers were responsible for at least $1.7 million. That money came out of the state’s Emergency and Disaster Fund, which was meant to assist communities with preparation and recovery from natural disasters.Noem cited the cost associated with deploying the National Guard as one reason for not sending in troops in the aftermath of the McCook Lake flooding, which damaged or destroyed dozens of homes – one of the worst such incidents in the state’s history.“We have to be wise with how we use our soldiers,” Noem declared days after the flood.In next-door Iowa, where communities were even more broadly affected by the flooding, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds deployed the National Guard and asked President Joe Biden for a federal disaster declaration before the floodwaters had even receded – a request he granted the next day.“It’s frustrating that she can use our state funding for National Guard, but not to help the actual people that live here,” Speichinger, a Democrat, said. “Her people should take priority over political displays.”Noem visits the US border with Mexico near McAllen, Texas, on July 26, 2021.Stephen Groves/APAmid a wave of backlash, Noem’s office released astatementsaying the reason the Guard wasn’t deployed was not because of the costs, but because no request had been made from local authorities. But another McCook Lake resident and strong Noem supporter, Dennis Johnson, called that a lame excuse, adding, “If you know there’s a need, you should have deployed National Guard.”As head of Homeland Security, Noem would oversee the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a position that many residents of McCook Lake wonder whether the governor is fit for. Renae Hansen – who manages an environmental nonprofit on the lake and has been a leading community figure in rebuilding efforts – said the rest of the country should be prepared to handle disasters largely on their own under Noem’s leadership.“I have zero faith that Gov. Noem is going to be instrumental in helping after a natural disaster,” Hansen said. “They better make a plan for themselves. It was everyone for yourself when it came down to our disaster … our city failed us, our county failed us, and our state failed us.”‘She’s not welcome here’The drive into the Lower Brule Reservation, in south-central South Dakota, takes visitors through a bleak, beautiful winter landscape of frozen lakes and grassy fields dusted with snow.A bullet-riddled sign along a two-lane highway announces the southern border of the 404-square-mile reservation – a border Kristi Noem is barred from crossing.Video Ad Feedback'She's forbidden from our land:' Hear why Governor Kristine Noem was banned from South Dakota reservations00:54- Source:CNN“She’s not welcome here,” Boyd Gourneau, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, told CNN on a recent visit. “She said some very derogatory and untrue things” about Mexican drug cartels setting up shop on reservations. “I believe she said it to gain attention,” as she was in the running to become Trump’s vice presidential pick, Gourneau said.Gourneau’s ire stemmed from Noem’s statements at a joint state legislative session last January in which she declared that Mexican cartels had “a presence on several of South Dakota’s tribal reservations. … They have been successful in recruiting tribal members to join their criminal activity.”She added that the cartels were “using our reservations to facilitate the spread of drugs throughout the Midwest … in particular, fentanyl.” Without providing any names or specifics, she later added that “We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from cartels being there.”South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem speaks before former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump takes the stage during a Buckeye Values PAC Rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on March 16, 2024. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP) (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty ImagesvideoRelated videoHear from some South Dakotans who doubt Kristi Noem is fit to lead Homeland SecurityThe tribes have struggled for years to get more help with policing their vast and sparsely populated lands, which make up roughly 15% of South Dakota’s territory. In May 2023, in a lawsuit brought by the Oglala Sioux Tribe, US District Judge Roberto Lange found that the Biden administration wasn’t meeting its treaty obligations to adequately fund tribal police. In a preliminary injunction, Lange wrote, “the level of violent crime, drug trafficking, gang activity and trauma on the [Pine Ridge] Reservation is staggering, unprecedented, and overwhelming law enforcement resources.”Gourneau himself cited a similar shortage of police, saying that the Lower Brule and adjacent Crow Creek reservations often have a single officer on duty. Those two reservations have about 4,000 residents in an area encompassing 826 square miles of land, larger than the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego combined.Noem has taken some modest steps to help tribal policing, such as rolling out acertification programearlier this year to speed up training for law enforcement. And she has said she supported the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s lawsuit against the federal government.But tribal leaders bristle at what they see as her implying they’re somehow complicit with the cartels. “She’s clearly trying to raise her profile as somebody who’s tough on the border, tough on crime,” Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney and member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, told The Guardian in June. “She’s trying to use tribal nations as ploys for her political ambition.”Boyd Gourneau, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.CNNWithin four months of her January comments, and others, all nine Indigenous reservations banned Noem from their lands. “Governor Kristi Noem’s wild and irresponsible attempt to connect tribal leaders and parents with Mexican drug cartels is a sad reflection of her fear-based politics that do nothing to bring people together to solve problems,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire in a news release. “Rather than make uninformed and unsubstantiated claims, Noem should work with tribal leaders to increase funding and resources for tribal law enforcement and education.”No olive branches have been forthcoming from the governor. “Instead of working with me,” said Noem at a May 17 press conference, “many of them have chosen to banish me, and I will ask them right back, why have they not banished the cartels?”Gourneau said he sees her rhetoric of blaming the tribes as playing into racist stereotypes. “It’s spreading hate,” he said. He noted that Hamlin County, where Noem grew up, is close to the Lake Traverse Reservation. “I just wish she would educate herself more about us and our tribes and our people.”‘We never really ask’On a recent Tuesday, an icy wind blew outside a warehouse-like building the size of three football fields at the MoDak Dairy farm near Goodwin, South Dakota. Inside, where some 2,600 cows ate or slept awaiting their turn at the milking parlor at one end of the building, it was pleasantly temperate, light and airy. The cows chewed their cuds and milled about on a smooth floor of sand.Greg Moes, who runs the dairy, told CNN it’s been in his family for four generations. He said he’s a supporter of Trump and of Noem. But he said he doesn’t know how he’d run the dairy without immigrant workers. It takes 40 workers to milk the cows three times a day, 365 days a year, and feed and care for them. Moes said half his workers are foreign born. As for their immigration status, “We never really ask at all. We have the right papers on file. And … that’s what it is,” he said.Another farmer, Marv Post, chair of the South Dakota Dairy Producers Association, said immigrant workers are key to their industry and to the state’s economy. South Dakota produced about 8.3 million tons of milk in 2023, according to the US Department of Agriculture.South Dakota Farm Bureau Federation President Scott VanderWal said dairies can’t rely on workers with so-called H-2A visas, because those are only for seasonal labor. And US citizens, he said, “don’t want to do that work.”Video Ad Feedback"We will not have food:" Why South Dakota farmer believes Gov. Kristine Noem won't implement mass deportations01:29- Source:CNNThe shortage of homegrown labor runs wide and deep. Not just for dairy, but also for “feed lots, [and] the larger cash-grain operations, especially during planting and harvest,” VanderWal said.Moes said he supported Noem sending South Dakota’s National Guard to the border, and he sides with Trump’s promises to restrict immigration. He said people should “not just be coming because it’s the good life or, you know, someone’s going to give you handouts.”At the same time, Moes admitted he worries about what happens next and warned that “the food supply will dry up real fast” if undocumented agricultural workers are rounded up and deported. “I guess we have to trust in our officials,” he said.As governor, even as she railed about the border, Noem didn’t make waves about the use of undocumented workers in agriculture in her own state.Now, if she is confirmed as DHS secretary, Noem will directly confront the difficulty of satisfying both MAGA demands for massive numbers of deportations and the needs of agriculture and business to retain the millions of undocumented workers they rely on.It’s also unclear how Noem’s authority over the vast apparatus of DHS will be subject to the decisions of former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan, whom Trump has named as his “border czar,” and of hardline deportation advocate Stephen Miller, who will be Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and “Homeland Security adviser.”“It’ll be interesting to see how she navigates being DHS secretary when we have these two very strong figures in the Trump administration leading the show,” said Orozco, the immigration counsel. He said that while he expects “they’ll go after the low-hanging fruit first,” such as deporting people with criminal convictions, and ending parole and protected status programs, “in the end, if you’re undocumented and you’re in the country, you’re going to be a target.”Videos by CNN’s McKenna Ewen, Jeremy Harlan and Anna-Maja Rappard.