Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee for nearly four hours and refused to apologize for or retract administration statements that labeled two U.S. citizens as domestic terrorists after they were killed by immigration agents in Minnesota.
The hearing, her first appearance before Congress since those fatal shootings, turned combative almost immediately and never really cooled down.
Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed on Jan. 7. Alex Pretti was killed on Jan. 24. Both were American citizens. Both were labeled domestic terrorists by the administration shortly after their deaths. Neither label has been formally withdrawn.
NBC News reported that when pressed by Sen. Dick Durbin, the committee's ranking member, on why Good and Pretti were falsely labeled, Noem offered condolences but did not concede the characterization was wrong. She told the committee:
"These are tragic situations, and I can't imagine what these families go through and losing a loved one."
She then pivoted to the circumstances of the operations, calling them chaotic and saying the agency relied on information provided by agents on the ground. She confirmed the FBI was leading an investigation into both killings and that Homeland Security Investigations was also involved.
Democrats on the committee used specific cases of U.S. citizens caught up in enforcement operations to challenge Noem's leadership.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar questioned her about ChongLy Thao, a naturalized U.S. citizen arrested by immigration agents inside his Minnesota home, then later released after authorities determined they had the wrong person. Noem did not condemn the mistaken arrest and did not directly answer whether it had been wrong.
Sen. Adam Schiff pressed Noem on the administration's public statements following the Good and Pretti shootings, cutting her off at one point to assert that she did not put out factual information to the country on the days those individuals were shot.
There was also the case of Marimar Martinez, a Chicago teacher shot five times last year by a Border Patrol agent who accused her of using her car to assault federal officers. Federal prosecutors later dropped the charges filed against her with prejudice. Noem claimed not to know the details of that case.
Here is the problem for the administration, and it is not a small one: every wrongful detention, every misidentified citizen, every dropped charge hands the opposition a weapon. The enforcement mission is legitimate. The legal authority exists. The public mandate is real. But operational sloppiness corrodes all of it.
The sharpest criticism did not come exclusively from Democrats. Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina who has repeatedly criticized the administration over its immigration enforcement actions, called Noem's leadership at DHS "a disaster."
He told the committee he was "disappointed" at her focus on deportation numbers and delivered a line that should concern every conservative who wants this enforcement agenda to succeed:
"What we've seen is innocent people getting detained that turn out are American citizens."
That is not a line from Chuck Schumer. That is a Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee. When your own side is flagging operational failures publicly, the response cannot be to recite statistics. It has to be accountability and correction.
Noem did present the committee with enforcement figures designed to demonstrate the scale of the administration's immigration efforts:
Those are serious numbers that reflect serious work. Removing 1,500 suspected terrorists and nearly 8,000 gang members makes the country safer. That reality does not evaporate because of operational mistakes. But the mistakes don't evaporate because the numbers are impressive, either.
Noem also denied the existence of deportation quotas at the Department of Homeland Security when questioned by Sen. Chris Coons. She framed the administration's enforcement posture as targeted:
"We do targeted law enforcement operations going after those worst of the worst criminals that are here illegally."
Targeted operations that accidentally kill or detain U.S. citizens are, by definition, not targeted enough.
The hearing had its share of performative moments. Protesters disrupted proceedings, shouting "abolish ICE" and "Americans killed by ICE." One yelled at Noem directly: "You should be ashamed of yourself!" None of this is serious policy engagement. It is the theater that reliably accompanies any high-profile immigration hearing.
Democrats on the committee used the cases of Good, Pretti, Martinez, and Thao to argue that enforcement has gone too far. That framing is predictable and, in most cases, strategic rather than sincere.
The same senators who spent years tolerating an open border, who resisted every enforcement mechanism, and who preferred the euphemism "undocumented" to the legal term "illegal immigrant" are not suddenly concerned about the operational precision of ICE. They want enforcement to stop, not improve.
But that political reality does not absolve the administration of its obligation to get this right. The entire conservative case for robust immigration enforcement rests on a simple foundation: the rule of law.
Laws apply equally. Citizens have rights. The government exercises force carefully and accountably. When U.S. citizens are killed and then posthumously labeled domestic terrorists with no retraction, that foundation cracks.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee chairman, urged Democrats to move to fund the department. DHS entered a shutdown last month as lawmakers clashed over a funding bill to finance the agency and its operations. That fight matters. An underfunded department makes more mistakes, not fewer.
Noem told the committee something worth remembering:
"But it's important that we distinguish between disagreement over policy and the department's operational responsibility to enforce existing laws."
She is right. Policy disagreements are legitimate. The left's opposition to enforcement is ideological, and conservatives should not apologize for rejecting it.
But operational responsibility is exactly the point. Two American citizens are dead. Another was shot five times and had charges dropped with prejudice. A naturalized citizen was hauled out of his own home by agents who had the wrong man.
The left will exploit every one of these cases to undermine enforcement itself. That is what they do. The way to deny them that leverage is not to circle the wagons around every operational failure. It is to fix them, discipline the failures, and protect the mission by running it cleanly.
Conservatives do not have to choose between supporting enforcement and demanding competence. Competence is what makes enforcement sustainable.
The families of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti deserve answers that go beyond condolences and references to chaotic scenes. So does every American who supports this agenda and expects it to be executed with the precision the law demands.
The mission is right. The execution has to match.
