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, [it] 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.
Tillis also accused Noem of restricting FEMA money. He displayed a chart showing how much FEMA reimbursements had plummeted under the second Trump administration and said she needs to speed them up.
“The Homeland Security Act of 2002 expressly prohibits the Secretary of Homeland Security from restricting or diverting FEMA resources from the agency’s mission. Based on your disaster response, the chart that I just showed you, I have reason to believe that you’re violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly.”
Tillis then suggested that Noem was stalling his investigation of DHS’s immigration raid in Charlotte, North Carolina. He said that the state Office of Inspector General had noted ten cases in which Noem had prevented the investigation, adding: “That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” Tillis said as applause began to ring out in the hearing room.
He then denounced Noem for writing proudly in her book that she had killed her 14-month-old dog as a “leadership lesson about tough choices.”
“My point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis. We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve demonstrated anything but that in the time that I’ve seen you."March 3, 2026 (EIRNS)—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.”
