Kristi Noem, the new secretary of homeland security and former governor of South Dakota, threatened to give her employees lie detector tests as her department grapples with leaks.
“DHS is a national security agency,” a department spokesperson told Bloomberg Government, which first reported the news. “As such, it should and will polygraph personnel.”
Noem’s plans for polygraphs were apparently leaked to Bloomberg, which spoke with “two people without authorization to speak publicly.”
The directive comes after a high-profile raid took a wrong turn. Earlier this month, federal law enforcement deployed almost 400 agents to conduct immigration raids in Aurora and Denver, Colorado, but reportedly yielded the arrest of just one person with known gang ties. Plans for another large-scale immigration raid in Los Angeles were also leaked to the press ahead of time.
As a result, Noem and President Donald Trump’s deranged “border czar” Tom Homan seemingly concluded that people on the inside were foiling the administration’s plans for mass deportations and detainments.
Noem issued an internal directive to employees warning that the polygraphs would be conducted regarding unauthorized communications with external parties, including reporters and nonprofit organizations, according to Bloomberg. She reportedly noted the “deleterious effects” of leaks on immigration raid plans and said the results of the famously unreliable lie detector tests may be used to assess workers’ access to classified information.
Noem may be facing pressure from the president to not screw up more enforcement plans. After all, officers are falling short of Trump’s expectations for mass deportations. One estimate from Axios suggests that Trump’s arrest rate so far is behind that of former President Joe Biden.
Notably, the Department of Homeland Security already uses polygraph tests to suss out border-patrol applicants. But even some Republicans have referred to them as an “interrogation tool” and have highlighted the test’s high failure rate as preventing wannabe employees from joining an understaffed agency.
Noem wasn’t the first Trump administration official to call out supposed leakers for thwarting planned immigration crackdowns. In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Homan blamed an unnamed individual for sharing details regarding the Colorado ICE raid with the public.
“We think it’s coming from inside. And we know the first leak in Aurora is under investigation,” he said. “We think we’ve identified that person.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Associated Press, Homan expressed frustration that the operation was foiled. “This isn’t a game. We know TDA is dangerous,” he said, a reference to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. “Everybody can agree to that, but when they get a heads-up that we are coming, it’s only a matter of time before our officers are ambushed.”
During his first term, Trump and his administration promised to punish leakers. But these bullying tactics seem to have ticked up during Trump’s second administration. Beyond Noem, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency also barred employees from speaking with members of the press without permission as Trump threatened to eliminate the agency, which is responsible for helping communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters.
Considering Noem’s memo going after whistleblowers with polygraphs was seemingly leaked to the press, her plan doesn’t appear to be going so well.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
