Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem isn’t the only MAGA girl to moonlight as an influencer when they should be doing their main job, but she certainly took it to a grim extreme on Wednesday, when she toured El Salvador’s CECOT, a mega-prison housing alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
"President Trump and I have a clear message to criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW," Noem posted to X.
In an Instagram video, the “ICE Barbie” stood before the somber, shaved-head men in a full face of makeup, touting perfect Utah curls—a viral TikTok trend—with pearl earrings and a gold watch. She referred to the men crowded in a cage behind her as “terrorists,” accusing them of perpetuating violence in U.S. communities.
However, a different story has emerged as family members in the U.S. awoke to find their loved ones disappeared by the government.
Multiple people had to identify their missing brothers or husbands by the PR videos posted online by the White House or photos taken by wire services, such as the Associated Press.
“I realized that one of them was my husband,” Nathali Sánchez told Mother Jones. She was able to identify her husband, Arturo, through one of the videos Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House published bragging about the nighttime capturing.
“I recognized him by the tattoo [on his neck], by his ear, and by his chin,” Sánchez said. “Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew it was him.”
A prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the CECOT in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025.
Her husband is now behind bars at an infamously brutal prison as she raises their newborn daughter alone.
The sister of another man, Mervin Jose Yamarte Fernandez, recognized her brother from a social media post, telling the Miami Herald how much pain she could see in his eyes. “He was asking for help. And that help didn’t come from the lips. It came from the soul,” she told the outlet.
She added that her brother, like other detainees, had no criminal record.
The Trump administration has not made public any evidence of these men's wrongdoing. In many cases, they've reportedly been identified as gang members based on merely their tattoos.
To execute these deportations, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which allows Trump to swiftly detain and deport noncitizens. The last time this law, made in 1798, was used was in World War II to force thousands of Japanese immigrants into internment camps. This is the first time in U.S. history that the law has been used at a time that Congress has not declared war.
As of Wednesday, Trump’s efforts have been temporarily blocked by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg and, on appeal, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
But as Noem and the rest of the Trump administration awaits the fate of their deportation and incarceration plans, the “Border Patrol cowgirl” seems hell-bent on using any opportunity she can to turn this into good PR.
“If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadoran prison,” Noem said in a post on X.
If this job doesn’t work out for her, maybe she will at least get some social media brand deals out of it.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Trump administration had made its evidence public. It has not made any evidence public.
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