At Fiery Hearing, Republican Catholic Senator Thom Tillis Calls Kristi Noem's DHS ...

UPDATED: At Fiery Hearing, Republican Catholic Senator Thom Tillis Calls Kristi Noem's DHS leadership "a Disaster"

Most, though not all, other Republicans praised Noem. But she drew fierce criticism from Democrats, amid a widening rift over immigration enforcement between the Catholic Church and the White House.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during Tuesday’’ Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (Photo: C-SPAN video/screenshots)

This story has been updated.

By Gary Gately

Thom Tillis, the Catholic Republican U.S. senator from North Carolina, lambasted Kristi Noem Tuesday, calling her leadership of the Department of Homeland Security a “disaster” while condemning federal immigration agents’ violent enforcement tactics, often targeting U.S. citizens.

“I’m giving you a performance evaluation here; I’m not looking for a response,” Tillis told the embattled Homeland Security secretary during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership — and you have demonstrated anything but that…. What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem, a disaster.”

The fiery, 4 1/2-hour hearing marked Noem’s first appearance before Congress since federal immigration officers’ January killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The hearing followed months of mounting Catholic backlash against the Trump administration’s brutal immigration enforcement tactics.

Tillis renewed his demand for Noem’s resignation while denouncing DHS for immigration officers for violating the rights of U.S. citizens, accusing the secretary of stalling his investigation into the North Carolina immigration enforcement operation “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” and holding up desperately needed FEMA disaster-relief funds for the storm-ravaged state.

Tillis also decried widely reported deportation quotas at the direction of Stephen Miller, the chief architect of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies.

“We just want numbers. We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day because numbers matter, right?,” Tillis asked Noem, answering his own question: “No, they don’t matter. Quality matters, not quantity, quality.”

The senator, often visibly angry, at times shouting and pointing, held up a letter the DHS Office of the Inspector General sent to congressional lawmakers on Monday claiming the department’s leaders had “systematically obstructed” the office’s work, including a federal criminal investigation, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

“That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” Tillis told Noem.

During Tillis’ entire 10-minute tirade, Noem uttered only two words.

When Tillis asked: “Who does [Catholic border czar] Tom Homan work for? You or the president?” Noem replied: “The president.”

No apologies or retractions for Accusing Good, Pretti of “domestic terrorism”

At the hearing, Noem repeatedly refused to apologize for suggesting immediately after the shootings of Good and Pretti, both 37, that the victims had committed acts of “domestic terrorism” — or to retract the statements.

“You and your agency rushed to brand these victims as, quote, domestic terrorists,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the committee’s ranking Democrat, told Noem.

“We have ample video evidence and eyewitness testimony proving you are wrong. Your statements caused immeasurable pain to these families,” added Durbin, a Catholic and longtime advocate for immigrants. “Your statements caused immeasurable pain to these families.”

Noem said that she had based her initial statements on information from agents at the “chaotic” scenes of the two fatal shootings in Minneapolis.

“And you believe calling victims of that violence domestic terrorists as a way to calm the scene?” Durbin asked.

“These violent terrorists have put them in a situation where — it’s unprecedented what these agents have faced,” Noem responded, citing a what she called a dramatic increase in assaults on federal agents. “We’ve worked at targeting the worst of the worst, and many times our agents have been faced with violence.“

Moments later, she told Durbin, “You know, Senator, we are working in those situations where there’s a tragic loss of life and we continue to deliver information —”

“Is it so hard to say you were wrong? Durbin asked.

“We continue —as these investigations continue to go forward -- we will strive to provide factual information and we’ll continue.”

“And when you fail, do you admit it publicly?”

“Absolutely. We always know that there’s room for improvement.”

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, a Catholic and longtime immigrant advocate, speaks to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. (Photo: C-SPAN video/screenshot)

Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, read aloud from an Axios story which reported that Noem had blamed Miller for her remarks.

“No one has heard me say that,” Noem said, dismissing the story, attributed to anonymous stories.

Kennedy then grilled Noem on a $220 million taxpayer-funded DHS ad campaign, including a $143 million contract to Safe America Media, which then subcontracted with the firm the Strategy Group, which is led by the husband of Tricia McLaughlin, who until mid-February had served as DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs.

“I wasn’t part of this decision,” Noem said. “We followed the same processes that have been our policies.”

The brash McLaughlin, a Catholic and a favorite of Fox News and conservative Catholics who also appeared regularly on other cable news networks, had approved almost every social media post from DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Patrol. DHS disclosed the departure of McLaughlin two weeks ago, after other revelations that DHS had not reported for nearly a year an ICE agent’s killing of U.S. citizen Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez as he celebrated his 23rd birthday at a popular Texas beach.

To some critics, that begs the question: What else isn’t DHS telling us?

Tricia McLaughlin speaks on Fox News two weeks ago. McLaughlin, a Catholic, resigned as DSH Assistant Secretary, after resigning. (Photo: Fox News/screenshot)

In her opening statement, Noem blamed Senate Democrats for the DHS “reckless” and “unnecessary” shutdown. “It harms the men and women who work at DHS and their families,” she said. The Democrats, she said, “have held this department hostage,” adding, “As a result, critical national security missions, including border security, immigration enforcement, aviation security, disaster response, cybersecurity and the protection of critical infrastructure are all being strained.”

For his part, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, lamented the deaths of Good and Petri, acknowledging, “Mistakes have been made.” But, he also placed blame on the victims, saying: “Officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws. And there is a clear difference between conduct protected by the First Amendment and unlawful obstruction….

“From my perspective,” Grassley said, “I believe immigration enforcement and dignity aren’t mutually exclusive.”

That goes to the heart of support for Trump’s Mass deportation agenda: Even at a time when multiple polls show 6 in 10 Americans believe Trump’s immigration enforcement policies have gone too far, and a small, but growing number of Republicans agree. But the vast majority of GOP congressional lawmakers — and significant numbers of conservative American Catholics, as well as far-right Catholic commentators and organizations — continue to staunchly defend Trump’s draconian immigration crackdown.

Noem told the lawmakers that enforcement officers have begun using body cameras, but added that she opposed Democrats’ proposed ban on masks, repeating DHS claims that the agents must wear them “to be protected from doxing and from threats.”

But Agents’ masks represent more than an intimidation tactic, says Belkis Wille, associate director of Human Rights Watch’s Crisis & Conflict Division. “This is not only a violation of U.S. law, but also international law, which requires that law enforcement officers’ faces be visible to ensure accountability and give access to remedies for victims,” Wille told The Catholic Observer, stressing that international law allows concealing identity “only in rare cases for individual officers when there’s a legitimate need.”

“But,” she added, “when we see it adopted as a broad policy, that clearly is serving as a measure to block accountability. It’s impossible to even know who you have been abused by because they’ve taken measures to cover up their identities so they do not have to accept responsibility.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Noem also pointed to a dramatic reduction in DHS daily encounters along the southwest border during President Donald J. Trump’s second term, during which she said nearly 3 million “illegal aliens” have left the U.S. — 2.2 million who have voluntarily returned to their home countries, and more than 675,000 deported by the government.

The secretary went on to repeat the familiar assertion that most immigrants arrested by ICE are dangerous criminals with violent pasts.

But while administration officials have repeatedly claimed that the immigration crackdown has targeted the “worst of the worst” dangerous and violent criminals living in the U.S. illegally, statistics belie those claims. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a non-profit, non-partisan data-collection center at Syracuse University, reported that as of February 7, 2026, 50,259 out of 68,289 —or 73.6% — of ICE detainees had no criminal conviction. Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations. And a New York Times analysis of ICE arrests and detentions from January 20 to October 15, 2025, found that only 7% percent of those arrested nationwide had a violent conviction and a third had no criminal charges.

The hearing came amid an ever-widening rift between the White House and the Catholic Church over federal agents’ aggressive and often-violent immigration enforcement tactics — and a week after Trump defended his immigration agenda in his rambling, record-long State of the Union address.

That followed months of mounting criticism over the immigration crackdown from Pope Leo, the U.S. bishops’ conference, priests, religious sisters, lay Catholics, immigration advocates and civil and human rights groups.

“A faithful Catholic approach to immigration begins not with politics but with people,” CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt said in a statement. “Compassion, hospitality, and solidarity with the poor are not optional virtues. They are at the center of the Gospel. Yet mercy and justice travel together. One without the other distorts both…. Yet charity is never opposed to order,” Reinhardt added. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church is explicit: Nations have the right — and rulers the duty — to regulate their borders prudently for the sake of the common good.”

Pope Leo first publicly criticized Trump’s immigration policies in late September, when he told a reporter who asked about Cardinal Cupich’s decision to bestow upon Durbin a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for his work on behalf of immigrants, despite the Illinois Democrat’s longstanding support for abortion rights: “I understand the difficulty and the tensions, but I think, as I myself have spoken in the past, it’s important to look at the many issues related to the teaching of the Church. Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.’”

Meanwhile, Brian Burch, the former CatholicVote president, confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Holy See in late February, told Crux Vatican correspondent Elise Ann Allen in an interview published last week: “The administration of our immigration law is something where I suspect the Holy See and the United States will never be perfectly aligned, but I think that there’s something important here to emphasize and that is, these are two sets of moral goods that are often in tension.”

Immigration enforcement is crucial, Burch said, “to protect the safety, security, and coherence of our laws” and “not a set of evil policies rooted in hate or xenophobia.”

“That is a false claim that has never been true,” he said. “Instead, [enforcement] is a set of moral goods, namely the safety, security, and prosperity of our citizens that has been in tension with a set of policies that was chaotic and disorderly. And how we resolve that is never going to be perfect.”

Burch acknowledged “the emphasis from the Holy See’s part to welcome the stranger, to provide a sense of welcome to the poor and vulnerable that are seeking better lives.”

“How you resolve those moral tensions is often not perfect,” he said, expressing regret over the deaths of Good and Pretti at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Brian Burch meets with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican in September after Burch’s confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. (Photo: Vatican Media)]

That followed months of mounting criticism over the immigration crackdown from Pope Leo, the U.S. bishops’ conference, priests, religious sisters, lay Catholics, immigration advocates and civil and human rights groups.

Trump made immigration a keystone of his campaign in a nation where about 3 in 10 Catholics are immigrants and another 14% children of immigrants, a majority of people targeted for immigration detention or deportation are Catholics, and nearly 1 in 5 Catholics are vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is.

It is a nation — and a Church — as polarized as ever over views of Trump’s immigration policies that could hardly be more different.

Nor could the views on immigration of the two most powerful Americans on the planet: Pope Leo and President Trump.

Which will prevail?

Which will American Catholics ultimately choose?

Do we see the suffering Jesus among desperate immigrants follow his command to “welcome the stranger”? Do we become the face and voice of Christ to them?

“Angels Unawares” in St. Peter’s Square, by Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz, commemorates migrants throughout history fleeing genocide, slavery, war, hunger and persecution. The 20-foot-long, 11-foot-tall bronze monument portrays 140 migrants and refugees crammed in a boat. Among them: Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus fleeing to Egypt; enslaved Africans seeking freedom; Irish driven from their country by the potato famine; Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, forced to abandon their homelands; a Hasidic Jew escaping Nazi Germany; Central Americans seeking new lives across the U.S. border; and a Muslim forced out of Syria by civil war. (Photo: Vatican Media)

Watch the full U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:

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