Democrats on Tuesday stepped up calls for Kristi Noem’s ouster, with senators from across the ideological spectrum arguing the weekend killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis merits firing the homeland security secretary, while House lawmakers signed on to an impeachment attempt.
The campaign against Noem comes after Democrats vowed to block a measure funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because it includes money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose agents surged into Minnesota’s largest city in an operation that has resulted in the deaths this month of Pretti and Renée Good, both US citizens.
In a post on X addressed to Donald Trump, John Fetterman, a moderate senator representing swing state Pennsylvania who has signaled skepticism with the party’s strategy on homeland security funding, made “a direct appeal to immediately fire” Noem.
“Americans have died. She is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy,” Fetterman wrote.
“DO NOT make the mistake President Biden made for not firing a grossly incompetent DHS Secretary,” he added in reference to Alejandro Mayorkas, who Republicans blame for the large number of border crossings during the Democrat’s presidency.
He was joined by Elizabeth Warren, a progressive senator from Massachusetts, who wrote on X: “Alex Pretti wasn’t a terrorist. He was a VA nurse. When agents pushed a woman to the ground, he tried to help her up. His last words were ‘Are you okay?’ Enough. Kristi Noem should resign.”
Jacky Rosen, a moderate Nevada senator who narrowly won re-election in 2024 even as Trump clinched her state’s electoral votes, called Noem “an abject failure” and said in a statement: “She’s either too incompetent to rein in the agency under her purview, or she endorses the blatant constitutional violations being committed.
“Kristi Noem and her department’s latest attempt to mislead the American public regarding the brutal and unjustified killing of Alex Pretti is deeply shameful, and she must be impeached and removed from office immediately,” Rosen said.
The Republican-led Senate judiciary committee on Monday announced that Noem will testify on 3 March, prompting its Democratic ranking member, Dick Durbin, to say: “Secretary Noem refused to appear before the Senate judiciary committee last year and now tells us that she will be available in five weeks – should she still be DHS secretary at that time.”
Speculation about Noem’s standing with the president heightened on Monday after he announced that his “border czar”, Tom Homan, would take over the operation in Minneapolis from Greg Bovino, a US border patrol official who reports to the homeland security secretary.
Any effort to remove Noem from office would begin with her impeachment by the House of Representatives. Robin Kelly, an Illinois congresswoman, introduced articles of impeachment against Noem following the killing of Good, and on Monday, a spokeswoman said that 145 Democrats had co-sponsored the bill.
The group includes several lawmakers representing swing districts, including Pat Ryan and Laura Gillen of New York, Greg Landsman of Ohio and Dave Min of California.
Impeachment of cabinet secretaries is rare. Before the GOP-led House impeached Mayorkas in 2024, the only other cabinet member impeached was the war secretary William Belknap in 1876. Neither was convicted by the Senate.
Republicans have been comparatively guarded in their views towards Noem, who said that the federal agents who killed Pretti “fired defensive shots” and accused the VA nurse of arriving “at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement”.
John Curtis, a Utah senator, on Monday said on X: “I disagree with Secretary Noem’s premature DHS response, which came before all the facts were known and weakened confidence.”
