Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, visiting a San Diego border crossing Thursday, made far-reaching claims about her agency’s work against drug smuggling while she blasted congressional efforts to halt its funding.
Democrats in Congress have blocked the budget for the entire Homeland Security department in response to immigration agents’ violent tactics nationwide, including fatally shooting two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
Noem, speaking from inside a locked building at the Otay Mesa port to an invitation-only group of reporters, said Democrats are showing they “don’t care” about national security and need to “come to their senses.”
The agency had described the event, which was not open to all local media, as designed to highlight the “Trump administration’s historic border security and drug seizure efforts.” A government-run livestream video of the news conference began with loud police siren sounds, played on a loop for 10 minutes prior to Noem’s appearance. The volume of the sirens was lowered as the speeches began, but continued to churn in the background.
Noem spoke at a podium surrounded by mounds of plastic bags, large bins and cardboard boxes, which she said were filled with drugs confiscated from traffickers in the San Diego area. She did not specify when the drugs had been found. She applauded immigration agents’ efforts to slow the number of people caught crossing the border, but noted that most illegal drug shipments are caught at ports of entry.
She lauded local officers who she said are “interdicting drugs like you see here today,” and placing them in a vault, which she said now holds hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs. She said a vault she toured contained 1.7 billion lethal doses of fentanyl and cocaine — that would be roughly the equivalent of killing every adult and child in the United States four times — and said a plastic bin near her feet contained enough fentanyl to kill 10 million people.
Noem said since Trump’s inauguration, fentanyl trafficking at the border is down 56%. That statistic that could not be independently verified.
Experts have questioned the government’s calculations about fentanyl seizures, noting that the potential lethal dose from a raw amount of the substance is far larger than the number of actual doses that reach people. While synthetic opioid deaths have been a nationwide scourge, the Centers for Disease Control reported in 2025 that overdose deaths declined significantly in 2024 from earlier years. It estimated total opioid deaths, which would include fentanyl, at 55,000.
Noem was flanked by Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks and CBP Port Director Rosa Hernandez.
During her speech, Hernandez said that a new influx of funding has allowed Customs and Border Protection to hire 5,000 new CBP officers, to allow more thorough inspection of all cars and people moving through border ports. “Our efforts are never going to stop,” she said. Noem called drug cartels, who Trump designated as foreign terrorist organizations last year, “the ISIS of the western hemisphere.”
In addition to drug seizures, Noem highlighted DHS’s other roles apart from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, like the TSA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, and natural disaster response workers, making a case for the utility of the department beyond the roving patrols of immigration agents that have been under public scrutiny for the past year.
Democrats in Congress have blocked funding for the entire department during budget negotiations, largely in response to immigration raids in Minnesota, where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents in January. Democrats say further legislation is needed to ensure an end to violence against civilians.
ICE and Border Patrol will still have a surplus of funding if the government shuts down, because they received billions from the funding bill the Trump administration called the One Beautiful Bill Act.
Noem said the Democrats need to “come to their senses” and that they are showing they “don’t care” about national security.
In response to questions, Noem said ICE agents are carrying out “targeted operations,” prioritizing the arrests of people who are threats to public safety. Noem called the migrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration “terrorists, rapists and pedophiles” who “invaded” the country.
According to internal ICE data, most of the people arrested by immigration agents in 2025 did not have criminal records.
Noem also accused California leaders, namely Governor Gavin Newsom, for sanctuary state policies that instruct local sheriffs to reject transfer requests from ICE, and said Newsom had “released 4,500 criminal illegal aliens” into California communities “to create more victims in the state.”
Noem said immigration detention centers meet the highest safety standards of any jails in the country, and said all detained migrants are given the option to agree to be given $2,600 and be flown immediately to their home country.
In Times of San Diego interviews with more than a dozen immigration detainees, as well as immigration advocates and lawyers, none of them said they had been offered or mentioned others receiving $2,600 for self deportation.
Times of San Diego and other media outlets have reported extensively on cases of migrants from central or South America who have been deported to Mexico, where they’re unable to return to their countries of origin. People held in nearby Imperial Detention Center told Times of San Diego that they felt pressured to agree to be deported. One woman from Venezuela, who had held legal temporary protected status but was then arrested, agreed to deportation — then was driven by bus to southern Mexico and left with no money and no passport.
Outside the tall, metal door of the building where Noem’s press conference was held, protesters wearing bandanas and holding colorful signs chanted and sang songs with jokes at Noem’s expense. Multiple signs compared the Trump administration to Nazi Germany and referenced Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. “Trump is the REAL danger to this country,” read one sign. Another said simply, “We love harder than you.”
At the end of the Noem event, she left the podium, and the soundtrack of sirens continued to play on the streaming video for another minute before the audio was turned off. Outside, the protesters were shuffled to the sides of the driveway to make room for a caravan of black SUVs.
