Sen. Thom Tillis, a moderate Republican from North Carolina, tore into Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in what The Hill called “a 10-minute tirade criticizing her from everything to her handling of the deaths of two Minnesotans to killing her own dog in a monologue that garnered applause from the audience of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
The Hill quotes Tillis: “I’m giving you a performance evaluation here—I’m not looking for a response,” adding that “time after time after time, I’ve been disappointed.” Tillis, who is retiring at the end of his term next year, “accused Noem of holding up federal emergency funding, violating U.S. citizens rights in carrying out immigration enforcement and quashing independent oversight of her department in a move he said would prompt him to renew his hold on DHS nominees.”
On the ICE operations under her responsibility, Tillis shouted: “We just want numbers. We want a thousand a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day, because numbers matter, right? No, they don’t matter. Quality Matters, not quantity, quality. And what we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem, a disaster. What we’ve seen is innocent people getting detained that, turns out, are American citizens.”
On the killing of Minnesotans Renee Good and Alex Pretti during ICE operations, he said deporting people is not wrong, but “The way you’re going about deporting them is wrong, the fact that you can’t admit to a mistake, which looks like, under investigation, it’s going to prove that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back.” He said when an officer is involved in a shooting, there is an investigation, which is not happening in this case, and that there must be a civil rights investigation into the Good killing. “Law enforcement, we’ve got to have their back. We’ve got to make it clear when they make a mistake, then they get corrected for it, but you don’t walk away from it, and you’ve done it too many times now,” he added.
Illis also accused Noem of restricting FEMA money. He showed a chart showing how much FEMA reimbursements had plummeted under the second Trump administration and said she needs to speed them.
