Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's office sent an email to U.S. Customs and Border Protection last week directing the agency to hunt down any remaining airport videos featuring his predecessor, Kristi Noem, and delete them. The message, obtained by HuffPost and reported by the Daily Beast, asked CBP to confirm once the footage was gone.
The directive marks the latest step in a quiet but systematic effort to strip Noem's personal brand from the department she once led, and it says as much about what went wrong under her watch as it does about Mullin's priorities.
Mullin, the former Oklahoma senator who was sworn in on March 25, has also reportedly scrapped a fleet of roughly 2,500 branded ICE vehicles that Noem ordered before her departure. Agents had warned the conspicuous markings drew attention to enforcement operations and turned the vehicles into targets. The email to CBP was blunt in tone: "If so, please kindly remove them as soon as possible and provide confirmation of removal."
Noem's ouster in March capped a tenure defined less by policy results than by self-promotion and cascading personal scandals. President Trump fired her, the first cabinet member dismissed in his second term, after growing dissatisfaction with her handling of a Minnesota immigration operation in which two Americans were killed and her Senate testimony about a $220 million DHS advertising campaign that prominently featured her own face.
That ad campaign became the accelerant. Noem testified under oath that Trump had personally approved the quarter-billion-dollar spend. Trump told Reuters he "never knew anything about it", and fired her the same day.
The details only got worse from there. National Review reported that the campaign had been subcontracted to The Strategy Group, a firm whose CEO is married to Noem's chief DHS spokesperson. Tom Bevan, co-founder of RealClearPolitics, offered a summary judgment that many in conservative circles shared: "It's clear now that Kristi Noem was the worst pick, the worst mistake of Trump's second term. She had no experience."
Republican Senator Thom Tillis called her leadership of DHS a "disaster" and urged her resignation before the firing came.
During House testimony, Noem also refused to directly deny having "sexual relations" with top aide Corey Lewandowski when asked point-blank by Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove. Her husband Bryon was sitting in the hearing room at the time.
If Noem's approach to leading DHS was to put herself on camera at every opportunity, filming an airport video in October while TSA employees worked without pay during a government shutdown, Mullin has moved in the opposite direction. Insiders describe a deliberate strategy of keeping enforcement activity out of the spotlight.
A person familiar with strategic discussions inside DHS told Politico the shift is intentional:
"It's by design. Just like Mullin and [acting ICE chief David] Venturella want, quieter and smarter operations. Finally."
The results suggest the lower profile is working. The New York Times reported on July 1, citing internal documents, that ICE arrested more than 10,000 people in just five days. That is a staggering operational tempo, achieved without the branded vehicles, without the self-promotional videos, and without the drama that defined Noem's months atop the department.
Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Politico that Mullin has "done what President Trump wanted: an end to the drama."
The contrast is hard to miss. Noem ordered thousands of branded vehicles that agents said compromised their safety. Mullin scrapped them. Noem filmed herself for airport screens. Mullin sent an email asking CBP to pull the footage. Noem spent $220 million on ads starring herself. Mullin's team is focused on reversing the Noem-era rollout and letting enforcement numbers speak for themselves.
Noem was reassigned as special envoy for a new Western Hemisphere security initiative called "The Shield of the Americas." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at U.S. Central Command, praised Noem for doing "a great job setting us up for success" and expressed confidence in Mullin. Hegseth affirmed the change came from the president: "We all serve at the pleasure of the president."
That diplomatic language cannot mask the scale of the fall. Noem arrived at DHS as a rising conservative star, a former governor with national name recognition. She left as the subject of ethics questions, personal scandals, and a taxpayer-funded ad campaign that enriched a connected firm.
Even her loyal aides who followed her out of DHS have reportedly been pushed aside. The orbit she built around herself at Homeland Security has been dismantled piece by piece.
Several questions remain unanswered. CBP has not publicly confirmed whether it has complied with Mullin's request to remove the videos. The precise fate of the 2,500 branded ICE vehicles, whether they were physically destroyed, reassigned, or simply rebranded, has not been detailed. And the source of the claim that agents warned about the vehicles drawing unwanted attention has not been publicly identified by name.
What is clear is that Mullin has moved quickly to erase the visual footprint Noem stamped across the department. The airport videos, the branded trucks, the flashy public posture, all of it is being stripped away in favor of an approach that prioritizes operational results over personal branding.
Noem's record as governor carried its own controversies, including a commutation decision that has since drawn renewed scrutiny. Her time at DHS added a new chapter, one defined by self-dealing, evasion under oath, and a $220 million ad campaign that became the most expensive political vanity project in recent memory.
The conservative movement does not lack for officials who want to be on television. What it needs, and what the border mission demands, are leaders who understand that enforcement credibility comes from results, not from personal branding campaigns funded by taxpayers.
Mullin's early moves suggest he grasps the difference. The 10,000 arrests in five days happened without a single airport video starring the secretary. Agents on the ground did the work without worrying that their vehicles advertised their presence to the people they were trying to apprehend.
Noem's time leading DHS is now being described by figures across the right as a cautionary tale. She had a historic opportunity, the largest immigration enforcement mandate in a generation, and she spent it building a personal brand on the public dime. Axios called the ad campaign "the most expensive political ad campaign of the year," and it was being run not by a campaign committee but by the Department of Homeland Security.
Noem herself has continued to engage publicly on border issues, including describing what she called a coordinated Chinese operation to funnel nationals across U.S. borders. Whether her new envoy role amounts to meaningful work or a soft landing remains to be seen.
The airport videos are coming down. The branded trucks are gone. The $220 million ad campaign is a line item in an inspector general's future workload. What's left is the work, and a new secretary who seems content to let the numbers do the talking.
When your successor's first priority is making sure nobody has to look at your face anymore, the legacy has already written itself.