The US Senate voted on Saturday to confirm the appointment of Kristi Noem as President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary.
The Homeland Security department assumes significance since it is likely to play a major role in Trump’s promised immigration crackdown.
The vote was bipartisan, 59-34, and Noem was sworn in later Saturday, reported CNN.
In her tenure, Noem had previously served as the governor of South Dakota since 2019.
She is a four-term Congresswoman.
The Homeland Security oversees crucial US agencies that include US Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the US Secret Service.
Noem said she would work to make America ‘safe’ again.
“Thank you, Mr. President @realDonaldTrump, for the confidence in me to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security,” Noem posted on X.
In another X post, she said: ” I will faithfully execute the duties of this office. I will always preserve the Constitution and the security of our nation. ”
Trump’s Immigration Actions
After his inauguration on Monday, Trump announced a series of major immigration executive actions that included declaring a national emergency at the US southern border.
He also initiated measures to end birthright citizenship.
The Trump administration is pushing ahead with efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement, opening up the possibility of targeting migrants who entered through Biden-era programmes and invoking an obscure immigration statute to make it easier to deputise state and local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has paused several programmes permitting temporary immigrant settlement, according to a Friday report by The New York Times.
The directive demands an immediate end to “final decisions” on certain visa applications pending a review by the Trump administration about whether to cancel the immigrant settlement programmes permanently, the Times reported, citing an email sent by the top official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The programmes offer possible entry for a large number of immigrants from an array of countries, including war-torn Ukraine and others dealing with political upheaval or extreme poverty.
(With inputs from IBNS and Reuters)
