Kristi Noem has ordered Homeland Security staff to take lie detector tests in hopes she can snuff out leakers who have been accused of foiling immigration raids this month.
The directive comes after some high-profile raids fell embarrassingly flat—namely one in Colorado that sought to arrest “hundreds” of Venezuelan gang members but, despite deploying 400 agents, yielded the arrest of just a single alleged gangbanger.
Noem’s polygraph plans were first reported by Bloomberg Government in what appears to have been yet another leak from Noem’s department, which includes border patrol, ICE, TSA, and more. Alex Howard, who was a spokesperson at DHS in the final year of the Biden administration, mocked Noem over this point on Tuesday.
A memo from Noem reportedly requires that all staffers be hooked up to a polygraph and asked “a question about unauthorized communications with media and nonprofit organizations.”
The results of those tests, which are infamously unreliable and often not permitted to be used as evidence in American courtrooms, will determine if staffers can “have initial or continued access to classified information,” Bloomberg reported.
A current spokesperson for DHS confirmed the memo was legit, telling Bloomberg, “DHS is a national security agency. As such, it should and will polygraph personnel.”
The department already has a number of lie detector tests on hand. They have been controversially used in the hiring process for border patrol agents for years, despite some GOP lawmakers decrying their high failure rate.
Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan was particularly peeved that the Colorado raid—ordered in hopes of rooting out Tren De Aragua gang members in Aurora —was foiled by an alleged leak.
“This isn’t a game,” Homan raged to the Associated Press. “We know that TDA is dangerous. 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. Their job is dangerous enough. So we are going to address this very seriously.”
The crackdown on leaks is part of a strong-handing trend across MAGA 2.0. It was revealed over the weekend that FEMA had barred staff from media contact without prior authorization from senior officials.
