Following Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by DHS agents, CREW President and CEO Donald K. Sherman issued the following statement:

“Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been running her agency and its massive law enforcement apparatus in a manner that is reckless, dangerous and unaccountable to the public, our laws and the Constitution. 

Secretary Noem has also faced serious ethics issues, including her apparent failure to report outside income from a dark money group, and a group tied to Noem secretly receiving a $220 million DHS ad contract outside of the normal competitive bidding process. These issues undermine trust in government, especially since she has yet to face any accountability for them. Congress has failed to pursue aggressive oversight of DHS, but even when congressional committees or state governments have requested information from her leadership or sought to investigate DHS’s actions, including this month’s shootings, Noem and DHS have stonewalled them. 

These abuses have now escalated to the point where two American citizens have been killed by DHS agents in their own government in a matter of weeks. Noem has advanced dangerous narratives that were later undermined by videos and eyewitness testimony, shielded the involved agents from any measure of oversight or accountability and publicly excused their behavior. Her loyalty is to the whims of President Trump and her own interests, not the Constitution.

So long as she heads DHS, we cannot trust that DHS has a leader that will keep our communities safe from the violence we saw this weekend. Noem must resign. If she does not, President Trump should fire her.”