Kristi Noem Spreads Bizarre, Unsubstantiated Story About Detaining A Cannibal

The Homeland Security chief's unverified anecdote is the latest attempt to dehumanize immigrants and justify federal agents rounding them up.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem added another dehumanizing label on Tuesday to her list of descriptors meant to justify the rounding up of migrants: cannibals.

The Republican joined President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in touring the state’s controversial new migrant detention facility, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.” The facility is a product of the Trump administration’s wider ongoing effort to incarcerate and deport the country’s immigrant population.

At a roundtable following the tour, Noem repeated her previous accusations that media outlets like CNN are lying “every single day about what these operations are” — and echoed the GOP talking point that the Department of Homeland Security is “going after murderers and rapists and traffickers and drug dealers.”

Then the secretary began telling a bizarre story about how U.S. marshals working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement told her they detained a cannibal and put him on a deportation flight. (Watch the video below.)

“And while they had him in his seat, he started to eat himself. And they had to get him off and get him medical attention,” she told reporters. “These are the kind of deranged individuals that are on our streets in America, that we’re trying to target and get out of our country because they are so deranged they don’t belong here.”