The following is the transcript of an interview with Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 31, 2025.
ED O'KEEFE: Good morning and welcome to 'Face The Nation.' Margaret is off on this Labor Day weekend. I'm Ed O'Keefe. We begin today with Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, who's joining us from Florida. Madam Secretary, thanks for being with us.
SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY KRISTI NOEM: Absolutely, Ed. Thank you for inviting me.
ED O'KEEFE: Yes. Well, we have a lot to discuss, so we want to start with this because we've learned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning on expanding operations in the coming days to Chicago. When are those operations expected to start? And you said in recent days that you're using the recent deployments in Los Angeles as a model. What does that mean?
SEC. NOEM: Well, we've already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago and throughout Illinois and other states, making sure that we're upholding our laws. But we do intend to add more resources to those operations. I won't disclose the details because they are law enforcement and investigative folks that are on the ground there, and I want to make sure we keep their security our number one priority, but we will continue to go after the worst of the worst across the country, like President Trump has told us to do. Focusing on those that are perpetuating murder and rape and trafficking of drugs and humans across our country, knowing that every single citizen deserves to be safe.
ED O'KEEFE: Part of what distinguished the Los Angeles operations, however, is that National Guard troops were there, in essence protecting or backing up those federal agents as they conducted operations. Is that what we should expect to see in Chicago?
SEC. NOEM: You know that always is a prerogative of President Trump and his decision. I won't speak to the specifics of the operations that are planned in other cities, but I do know that LA wouldn't be standing today if President Trump hadn't taken action, then that city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state. And so the citizens who live there, the small business owners in Downtown LA, they're thankful that President Trump came in with federal law enforcement officers and helped support keeping those streets open, keep their homes and businesses from burning down, and made sure the law and order was restored.
ED O'KEEFE: I just want to clarify one thing you said there. You said LA wouldn't be standing if not for these federal deployments?
SEC. NOEM: So many of those homes and businesses that were in Downtown LA and in those areas were dealing with riots and violence and coming in and bringing those federal law enforcement officers in was incredibly important to keeping peace, and so we are grateful that President Trump was willing to send resources and people in, in order to enforce the law. And Ed since then, we have arrested 5000 dangerous, illegal criminals out of LA and removed them from our country and had them face justice for their crimes. And many of these individuals were people who, have you know, conducted horrific- horrific activities against American citizens. Trafficking of children and pedophiles. And so that's one of the things that the people of LA can be grateful for, is that they don't have those bad actors, those people on their streets anymore because of the work of President Trump and his administration.
ED O'KEEFE: So as you know, we spoke with Illinois Governor, JB Pritzker about all this. And I asked him what he'd say to you about these forthcoming plans, let's play that and let you respond after.
[ON TAPE]
ED O'KEEFE: If she were to call you, what would you say? What's your message to her?
ILLINOIS GOVERNOR JB PRITZKER: Well, I tell her that what she's doing is inflaming passions and causing disruption that doesn't need to be caused. We have people that have lived, yes, in the state of Illinois, in the city of Chicago, for decades, working here, paying taxes. They're law abiding members of our communities, friends, neighbors, and why are we arresting them? Why are we making them disappear? Indeed, they're even disrupting the lives of people who are attempting to go through a legal process to stay in this country, who've been invited to a hearing, and then they're arresting them in the hallways on their way to that hearing. So this is dangerous. They shouldn't be doing it. It's anti-American. It's un-American, and I would tell her to maybe check herself for what does she really believe?
ED O'KEEFE: She's also critical the fact that Chicago is one of the cities that doesn't cooperate with federal immigration operations, and she was quoted as saying that Illinois quote 'refuses to have our back.'
GOV. PRITZKER: Well, that's not true. In fact, there were police officers who made sure that there was nobody interfering or attacking or causing problems for the ICE officials that were here. People have a right to express themselves. People have a right to their First Amendment, you know- freedom to express, and we protect that too in the city of Chicago. So it's not true that the nobody has their backs. What we won't do, however, is engage in what is a federal effort, that is to say, they have their job, immigration. We have our job, which is to fight violent crime on the streets of our city, and by the way, we're succeeding at that job. But when they bring people in and don't coordinate with us, they're going to cause enormous problems.
[END TAPE]
ED O'KEEFE: Madam Secretary, your response?
SEC. NOEM: Well, for 13 consecutive years, Chicago had more murders than any other American city. In fact, just last year, in 2024, they had three times the amount of murders that LA did, five times more than New York City. So he can talk about what a great job he's doing as Governor, but he's failing those families who will no longer have their child with them, their mother or their father or their cousin, aunt, and uncle that are gone forever because of the violence that's happening in Chicago. So I was a governor for many years. So I recognize the responsibilities that you have on your shoulder when you're a governor. And I'll tell you, as a governor, when I had to make tough decisions, and when I had disagreements with the Biden administration or challenges my people were facing, I called up the Biden administration. I went and talked to them. I asked for meetings. I fought for my people. This seems like it's more about Governor Pritzker's ego, now, rather than actually protecting his people. If he has one murder in the city of Chicago, he should be calling President Trump and saying, what's your ideas? What can we do? They don't even honor our detainers in Chicago. They don't go out there and work with us to make sure we're bringing people to justice. And instead, he goes on TV and he attacks me when we're doing exactly what those people need, is they need someone to help them get the dangerous criminals off their streets. And if he has 1, 2, 5, or 10, those victims and their families deserve to walk in freedom on those streets and not have to worry about what's going to happen to them on their way to their jobs.
ED O'KEEFE: Well, you anticipated some of the questions we asked of him. So, as we say in this business, stay tuned for that. But we'll- let's ask you a few more while we have you. Are you planning, beyond Chicago, to expand these kinds of operations to other cities? There have been reports, for example, that Boston may very well soon be next.
SEC. NOEM: I think there's a lot of cities that are dealing with crime and violence right now. And so, we haven't taken anything off the table. We've been making sure that we have the resources and the equipment to go in. We've been working to partner with every single agency that we can. We have hundreds and hundreds of agreements with local law enforcement, sheriffs, city administrators and mayors across the country that want to solve problems. I'd encourage every single big city, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, whatever they are, if they want to help make their city safer, more prosperous, allow people the opportunity to walk in freedom, like the people of Washington, DC are now, and enjoying going out to eat at night and not having to worry if they're going to be a victim of a carjacking or a robbery, they should call us. Because we will work with anybody and do what we can to make sure that we're upholding our Constitution, upholding the law, but making sure their families are safe.
ED O'KEEFE: You mentioned, there, a bunch of cities in Democratic-controlled states with Democratic mayors, and there have been a lot of questions asked about that focus. There are Republican cities with major crime issues as well, and we haven't heard about plans to deploy, say, to Dallas or to Oklahoma City, or to cities in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi that have considerable crime rates, in some cases higher, percentage-wise, than those other cities you mentioned. Are there plans to go to red states and Republican-controlled cities in this kind of way?
SEC. NOEM: Absolutely. Every single city is evaluated for what we need to do there to make it safer. So we've got operations that, again, I won't talk about details on, but we absolutely are not looking through the viewpoint at anything we're doing with a political lens. It is what can we do to make sure that we're continuing to get up every day and to fight for the American citizen, and that they have the chance to go out there and pursue the American dream.
ED O'KEEFE: All right. So, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aiming to hire another 10,000 officers by the end of this year, nearly double the size of the current force. Basic training is being reduced from 13 weeks to 8 weeks in an attempt to accelerate the hiring and the onboarding of these officers. Their signing bonuses, some age caps have been lifted. Did the hiring standards get lowered in part to meet this daily quota of 3,000 arrests?
SEC. NOEM: Well what we've done as far as recruitment- and, again, Ed, we've got over 130,000 people that have applied to be a part of that 10,000 new hires within ICE, but we did not reduce any of the qualifications or time frames. What we did was that we made sure that we were being much more efficient in getting these officers out on the street and giving them more opportunity to get trained quickly and recognize the previous training that they had. If they were a previous law enforcement officer or someone that wanted to come back out of retirement, we facilitated that, where before, the federal government had ignored those individuals or put them through classes that they had already qualified for or become masters at. So, I think that streamlining is what needed to happen, and we're so grateful that so many other retired law enforcement officers or those from different areas of the country say, listen, I want to be a part of what ICE is doing, because these individuals are out there making sure that they're going after dangerous criminals and bringing them to justice, and making sure that if they're here in this country, and they've perpetuated these crimes and violence, that they have the opportunity to go home to their own home country and face consequences there as well.
ED O'KEEFE: One of the most high profile examples of someone who's been rounded up by ICE in recent months is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the fate of his situation is still up in the air. He's awaiting trial on human smuggling charges set for January in Tennessee, but your department is also working to get him deported to Uganda. If he broke the law in this country, as the administration alleges, shouldn't he be held here and face charges here instead of being deported?
SEC. NOEM: Well, prosecution decisions are always made by the Department of Justice and in Pam Bondi's department, so we will let them do that. Although this individual does have criminal charges pending. He has charges pending against him civilly as well, and the one thing that we will continue to do is to make sure that he doesn't walk free in the United States of America. This individual was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member, an individual who was a wife beater and someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors and even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off. He was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children, so he needs to never be in the United States of America, and our administration is making sure we're doing all that we can to bring him to justice.*
ED O'KEEFE: But I heard you say that we're going to let the Justice Department do that. Does this mean that- does this mean that- does that mean the push to deport him to Uganda is off?
SEC. NOEM: Oh, we will still continue to pursue all options. We will make sure that he's not released into this country. So regardless of that, yes, absolutely, he's not an American citizen, and he shouldn't be here, and especially because of his dangerous criminal activities, we should ensure that we leave every avenue on the table.
ED O'KEEFE: Got it. So, among other things, you oversee FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As we hit the peak of hurricane season, and we're marking the 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina this weekend, 20 years ago. Is the federal government prepared to respond to a major disaster at this moment?
SEC. NOEM: We are absolutely more prepared than the last administration and doing a much better job responding to the disasters we've already experienced since President Trump has been in the White House. We've had over a dozen, close to 20 different disasters throughout the country just since President Trump has been the president of the United States. And we have deployed resources twice as fast as FEMA ever has in the past, gotten people on the ground over 100% quicker than any other administration has. In fact, with the disasters that we saw that were so horrific and devastating in Texas and New Mexico, North Carolina, we've had people on the ground within hours responding to those families that were in crisis. So FEMA is consistently doing a much better job than it has in the past, and we're going to continue to stay on guard and make sure that we're there to always support these local states and these local emergency management directors in them being- getting the chance to run their disaster operations.
ED O'KEEFE: I bring this up because part of what you're suggesting there is in dispute from a handful of current and former FEMA employees who wrote to Congress this past week raising concerns about the agency's ability to respond to forthcoming natural disasters. One of the specific concerns they have is this decision that now has you reviewing any cost of $100,000 or more that FEMA plans to make. Can you give me an example of a charge of $100,000 or more that you've rejected?
SEC. NOEM: Yeah, absolutely. We paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, to a one-woman firm to deliver to us 30 million meals, and she delivered only 50,000 to us. And it was a- one person that the st- federal government had contracted with in order to deliver 30 million, and I don't know how they ever expected one person to do that. We, we had a person that was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to book meetings that of less than 10 to 15 people, and with no meetings that we saw that were productive or couldn't be done by sending an email. Over and over again we're looking at these contracts and looking at the fact that, are they duplicative? Are they just supporting woke ideologies, DEI? Or are they actually delivering disaster response, which is what FEMA job is, is to put in place operations, to support states and local governments to take care of people. And so that evaluation has saved us hundreds of millions of dollars within FEMA and within the Department of Homeland Security, it has saved us $13 billion already. And we're going to consider- continue to make sure that we're accountable to taxpayers. You know, in Washington D.C., I rarely run into anybody who says I'm a lobbyist for the American taxpayer. Well, guess what, Kristi Noem is. Every day I get up and I think, the American people are paying for this, should they? And are these dollars doing what the law says they should be doing? I'm going to make sure that they go there and they're spent on what's appropriate according to the law, and that the taxpayers understand that it's a worthwhile effort.
ED O'KEEFE: At least 20 of the people who signed this letter were current FEMA employees, and they've been placed on administrative leave. And I'd heard you in previous interviews suggest that those that are making accusations against the agency should put their names on the criticisms of the allegations. So now they have, and they've been placed on administrative leave. And I'm curious if it's now the policy of DHS that any time an employee puts their name on something publicly criticizes you or the President's leadership, that they should anticipate being put on leave or fired.
SEC. NOEM: This- this letter was signed by many people anonymously. There was some who had their names on there. And those who had their names on there were temporary contract employees who had worked for the Department of Homeland Security for less than a year, individuals who are not long-term FEMA employees, who- who grab a hold of the mission to be there, to go and serve individuals and to- are deployed across the country, and have for years to make sure they're responsive to families in their time of need. So absolutely, every employee will be evaluated as to if they're doing their job and if they're doing it appropriately. And my hope is that every single person within the Department of Homeland Security, but also in this government, gets up every day wanting to make America safer, wanting to do their job and to contribute to that in a very productive way.
ED O'KEEFE: All right, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joining us this Sunday from Florida. Thank you so much. Lots to discuss. We appreciate it.
SEC. NOEM: Thank you, Ed. Appreciate it.
*Editor's note: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been charged with two counts of human smuggling and has pleaded not guilty. He is currently in ICE detention pending trial. He has not been charged with any counts related to child abuse.
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