Kristi Noem Didn’t Give a Sh*t About ‘the Details’
Such as a woman who was here legally and helped the homeless—but was then deported anyway.
BEFORE SHE WAS INFORMED YESTERDAY via a presidential Truth Social post that her tenure as secretary of homeland security is about to end, Kristi Noem was battered by Democrats and Republicans alike at congressional hearings this past week. A couple of Republicans made news by eviscerating her tenure in office, but I thought a different back-and-forth was at least as revealing.
Last week, Noem admitted that her department had arrested and deported DACA recipients—the “Dreamers” who are shielded from deportation and have had work authorization since 2012—at unacceptable levels. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) grilled her about the startling confession:
Durbin: Do you understand that people that are covered and protected by DACA have to go through a background check which includes a criminal check? Yes or no?
Noem: Yes.
Durbin: You do. Last week your agency informed us that last year ICE arrested 261 DACA holders and deported 86 of them. We learned about a DACA recipient who’d lived in this country for decades, was arrested by ICE at her green card appointment. In tears she hugged her daughter goodbye, she was deported to Mexico within twenty-four hours. Madam Secretary, why have you deported dozens of DACA holders who had to comply with a criminal background check to be eligible for DACA?
Noem: Sir, we follow all laws as applicable to the Department of Homeland Security in how we handle detainment and deportations.
Durbin: Why did you deport them?
Noem: I will not—I don’t know the details of that specific case you just read but I will look into it, sir.
Noem added that DHS has followed the law, to which Durbin responded that she had “clearly violated the law.” But I was struck by Noem’s words: “the details.”
Do we expect the DHS secretary to know “the details” of every case in the country? Of course not. But we should expect her to care about them.
THE WOMAN DURBIN WAS REFERRING to is Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, 42, who lived in the United States for 27 years and has a daughter who is a U.S. citizen. I wanted to know what it’s like when the government—one’s own government—says you can live and work here legally, before betraying you at a green card appointment and plucking you unceremoniously from your family, job, and life. So I spoke to Maria, who is currently living with her mother in Mexico, to find out what she’s been through and what it says about Trump, Noem, and the relentless deportation machine that continues to break the law.
Maria, from Sacramento, is a hospitality area manager for Motel 6 properties. She had been looking forward to her green card appointment on February 18. Though she is able to live and work here legally under DACA, her daughter Damaris, 21, is now old enough to sponsor her for a green card. For Maria, a green card would “open doors” to visit different countries, she told me. Growing up in a Catholic family, she dreamed of visiting the Vatican in Rome. She was so excited for her appointment that she did her hair and makeup.
But that excitement turned to dread as Maria was detained and deported back to Mexico the next morning.
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“I feel like it was entrapment,” she said. “The moment they told me I was going to be deported, first I felt like they killed me right then and there. But seeing my daughter devastated was one of the hardest moments I had in my life. I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do?’”
Life has grown hard. Maria helps her mother with the stand outside the front door where they sell vegetables, candy, tortas, water, and soda. She misses her life and her daughter, but also the other markers of American life. She enjoys Mexican food but misses Chinese, Indian, and Thai food.
Damaris has vowed to see Maria return to the United States, and she was in the audience during Noem’s oversight hearing this week. She also met with Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who used his time at the hearings to call for Noem’s removal, whether by resignation, firing, or impeachment. Damaris says he told her that he would do everything he can to help her mother.
I asked Maria what it means that her daughter is advocating so strongly for her. While Maria remained stoic throughout the conversation, I could hear her pride through the phone as she spoke about Damaris.
“To me, it means my whole entire world that I raised a good daughter, a daughter that is not going to let go,” she told me. “Standing up for me and fighting, being a voice for those that cannot speak, it means a lot. That I did a good job as a mother and raised a good citizen.” She was moved when Damaris decided to accompany her to Mexico, dropping her off at abuela’s house to make sure Maria was safe despite her ordeal.
THE STORY IS GUTTING, but it doesn’t end there. Democrats and advocacy groups have pegged the economic benefit of Dreamers at somewhere between $280 billion and $390 billion.
But what of the human impact that goes beyond those sterile numbers? Maria was working with a shelter program to house fifty unhoused families at one of the Motel 6 properties she managed, she told me. The Trump administration likes to paint immigrants as hostile, violent drains on American society. Maria was just the opposite, and thanks to her deportation, housing for those fifty families may now be in doubt.1 The U.S. government is deporting hard-working people who help the country grow, Maria said. “Why not give them the opportunity to be part of that country? We decided to go to a different country, we were taken as minors, but we built a life there. It’s very devastating.”
Maria’s message to the Trump administration is that in their zeal to remove criminals who are bad for the country, they have targeted good people like herself who are “assets to the country.” She also underscored that, in addition to helping those homeless families and other community work, she doesn’t live on government assistance, welfare, or food stamps.
“I try to help as much as I can. I do a ‘Feed the Homeless Day’ every year on my own, with my own money,” she said. “I never do it with the intention that I want people to see I have a better living than them. It’s from my heart, from my kindness—a lot of these families, they are U.S. citizens.”
Righting all these wrongs will be a Herculean effort, but that's what the next administration must do.
A favorite answer in the Congressional hearings repeated by several departmental leaders. “I’ll look into it,sir.” Kennedy omitted the “sir” if he used the reply. I think it was one of Bondi’s least disrespectful replies. This woman should be on a flight home and an official apology made.