Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem acknowledged Monday that she was trying to send a message to migrant gang members and the American people when she was filmed and photographed inside El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison last week.
“People need to see that image,” Noem said of the striking pictures of her surrounded by rows of tattooed inmates standing obediently inside their crammed cells at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador.
“They need to see that the United States is going to use every tool that we have to make our communities safer, that that is a consequence of someone who is a terrorist,” the DHS secretary added in an interview with Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier Monday night.
Noem said the tour was intended to provide “transparency” about how the Trump administration is dealing with alleged members of Tren de Aragua (TdA) and MS-13 detained in the US.
President Trump has declared both gangs to be Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
“The only people allowed in that prison are terrorists,” she explained. “And to tour that and to look at that, was giving the American people the transparency that they want out of their government.”
“They were able to see exactly where we sending these people who have murdered and raped Americans, that have decimated communities, and there’s going to be consequences for individuals who continue to do that.”
In stark contrast to the shirtless inmates in basic white pants or shorts, Noem wore a gold Rolex watch to the bleak facility.
The timepiece, identified as a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona in a viral post on X, retails for nearly $60,000.
The former Republican governor of South Dakota said that during her visit to the Central American country, she asked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele if he would be willing to “take more of these terrorists?”
“And he said, ‘Absolutely, we will. We will take the worst of the worst and make sure that they’re facing consequences for what they’ve done to your country’,” Noem said of Bukele’s response.
The Trump administration reached a deal with Bukele last month in which he agreed to house deported migrants affiliated with TdA — a Venezuelan prison gang that took up roots in the US during the Biden administration — and MS-13 in CECOT last month.
Some 250 suspected gang members have been shipped to the hellish prison since the Trump administration made the deal.
Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador, where they would be detained at CECOT.
Noem also took Baier on a tour of DHS’s National Command Center, which tracks activity on the southern border and coordinates federal, state and local law enforcement responses to natural disasters and other catastrophic events, such as mass shootings.
“If an incident happens in this country, it comes through this center and sends a notification out to all the agencies that would respond,” the DHS secretary explained, showing off her agency’s state-of-the-art operations hub, which is filled with an array of large screens displaying live video, data feeds and detailed maps.
“This feels normal,” Noem said of being DHS secretary and spending time in the command center. “When I was governor of South Dakota, I had 12 different FEMA-related natural disasters in my state.”
“And so we had an emergency operation center that we utilized quite often. This operates like that, and what it does is it puts everybody in the room solving a problem, on how to best, best address a crisis.”
Read the full article here
