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

Gov. Kristi Noem’s handling of several key issues in South Dakota offers a lens into how she may manage her sprawling responsibilities at the Department of Homeland Security.

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 Noem tapped to run the 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.