Kristi Noem Turns Cruelty Into Content for Her DHS Deportation Ads
“I want you to do [ads] for the border,” Donald Trump told Kristi Noem after nominating her to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At least that’s what the DHS secretary recounted at a Conservative Political Action Conference dinner in February: “‘I want them around the world,’” Noem recalled Trump saying. “‘I want you to tell people not to come to this country if they’re going to come here illegally.’”
Noem has certainly taken that directive to heart. Since assuming her position, Noem has appeared alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a slate of videos and photo ops, posted on social media, broadcast around the world and uploaded to the DHS website under the banner of “Making America Safe Again.” Whether accompanying ICE on an early morning raid in New York City or riding an ATV through the Arizona desert, Noem’s spotlight-ready makeup and curated costumes have been scorned by ICE officials, conservative commentators and the general public alike. In one particularly noxious video, Noem delivers a message from inside El Salvador’s infamously brutal “Terrorism Confinement Center,” or CECOT, where Trump recently sent hundreds of migrants from the U.S. Wearing an ICE baseball cap and a $50,000 gold Rolex watch, Noem stood in front of a crowded prison cell and told the cameras, “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.”
While Noem’s “made-for-television” approach might be irking some in Trump’s government, the videos are overall exactly what the president asked for. Trump himself, of course, has roots as a reality TV star, and he’s long had a knack for capturing the public’s attention. Indeed, the videos lay bare a core tenet of this administration: that the cruelty, as the adage goes, is the point.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Khury Petersen-Smith presciently noted in Truthout that Trump and his allies deploy fascistic imagery — particularly the spectacle of state violence at the U.S. border — in order “to produc[e] a more violent and repressive society.” It is not just Trump’s actions that are brutal, or the rhetoric cruel, but also the public example that he makes of them; Petersen-Smith argues that, by forcing us all to observe the ugly display of his power, Trump makes his violent agenda seem both invincible and inevitable.
Even if we’ve come to expect this kind of cruelty, it’s nevertheless been chilling to see how eagerly Trump’s followers have embraced the aesthetic of sadism less than 100 days into this administration.
Take “Trump Gaza,” for instance: a hideous AI-generated video that Trump shared to his social media accounts, which depicts the transformation of Gaza’s bombed-out ruins into a Riviera-style resort, complete with a golden statue of Trump himself. “Trump Gaza’s finally here,” sings an AI voice in the background as the president sips drinks on the beach with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That same week, the White House X account posted a video of police shackling immigrants and loading them onto a deportation flight. Featuring the sounds of jingling handcuffs and a whirring plane, the footage was captioned “ASMR” – a reference to autonomous sensory meridian response or the pleasant tingling sensation one might get from certain noises, which are often used in a popular genre of internet video. Or consider a recent post from the official White House X account, which hopped aboard the social media trend of turning photos into Studio Ghibli-style animations to mock a woman for crying while being handcuffed by ICE.
It’s laughable to think that a working class parent fleeing persecution in, say, Honduras or Venezuela is taking the time to scroll through Noem’s X feed.
Intentionally snide, these images articulate an attitude that’s central to the MAGA agenda: the belief that “wokeness” compelled people to bite their tongues for far too long, and with Trump back in the White House, everyone is now free to revel in their own contempt.
Because, of course, while Noem’s videos purport to be addressing migrants who want to come to the U.S. without authorization, her real audience is domestic. The videos, after all, are in English. And it’s laughable to think that a working class parent fleeing persecution in, say, Honduras or Venezuela is taking the time to scroll through Noem’s X feed.
The videos are blatant propaganda – security theater. They are power expressing itself. And while some may argue that critiquing Noem’s style in the videos borders on misogyny — what’s so bad, really, about having coiffed hair? — the fact is that the made-for-TV look is intentionally boastful. It serves the spectacle, differentiating Noem from the people that she’s arresting, and brandishing the message that this is just another day in the life for one of the most powerful people in the United States. Contrast Noem’s videos with the El Salvadoran government’s recent CECOT propaganda reels: While immigrants were being handcuffed, shaved and loaded into prison cells, Noem — the videos drive home — was just putting makeup on.
While Joe Biden’s administration attempted to conceal the barbarism of the deportation machine, Trump promotes it. This, however, is not to be mistaken with true transparency. The DHS videos center the criminal records of the immigrants being arrested, citing a laundry list of violent acts to justify their deportation — rape, murder, human trafficking, fentanyl smuggling. Conspicuously absent from the limelight is the fact that little support exists for many of these charges; the administration has neglected to share any evidence of criminal activity for the more than 200 men it’s locked up in CECOT.
A New York Times investigation found that the majority of the men sent to El Salvador lacked any criminal rap sheet. In one case that we know of thus far, a man managed to stave off his shipment to CECOT and secure a hearing at an immigration court. While the Trump administration had accused the man of membership in the Tren de Aragua gang, an affidavit from the man’s attorney states that at no point during the hearing did the government produce any evidence that he was a member.
Though the Trump administration has at this stage focused its efforts on bolstering unsubstantiated claims about violent criminals, it has also made clear that it intends to broaden its deportation regime. Many of Noem’s DHS videos are accompanied by the tagline, “Capturing the Worst First.” It doesn’t take a great grammarian to know that “first” implies a “second.”
The natural follow up question is, then, what comes next?