Kristi Noem, a homeland security chief hopeful, banned in parts of her state (original) (raw)

The sentencing hearing of a methamphetamine dealer in South Dakota would have been routine except for one detail: Gov. Kristi L. Noem had used his photo to falsely suggest the man was a drug trafficker for Mexican cartels who had hidden out on a reservation.

Her action complicated the case, according to the prosecutor. It had a different upshot for Noem.

The two-term Republican governor is one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies and has sought to burnish her national credibility with a hard-line stance on illegal immigration and border security. She is now the president-elect’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, the massive, $100 billion federal agency that oversees the border, disaster response and federal protection.

In her own state, however, she is banned from setting foot on tribal lands.

The nine nations whose reservations cover about 12 percent of South Dakota blocked Noem last year because of her allegations that cartels operate there and that tribal leaders are somehow complicit — all of which those leaders deny.

What they see as Noem’s penchant for exaggeration and disrespect for Native Americans could presage trouble in her coming federal role, they say. Both are likely to be raised when her confirmation hearing begins Friday, as are charges she prioritized border security over storm victims in her state.

Wayne Ducheneaux, a former tribal council representative for the Cheyenne River Sioux, calls the ban “a very telling action … that at the core goes to Governor Noem’s disregard for tribal sovereignty and a lack of understanding about how borders work. She lacks a fundamental understanding about how to work across any type of border, be it the United States border with Mexico or the Native nations within her own state.”

Neither Noem’s spokesman nor officials from South Dakota’s Department of Tribal Relations returned requests for comment for this story. She did take some actions last year to support Native communities, including a new training program for tribal law enforcement.

State Rep. Tony Venhuizen (R), once Noem’s chief of staff, defends her as a strong leader who is “not afraid of causing controversy or being in the center of controversy. In this new role she’s going to be dealing with challenging issues. She’s suited to that.”

The tribes’ friction with the governor began in 2019, when she signed controversial anti-rioting legislation that critics said was aimed at protesters — including Native Americans — trying to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline and similar projects.

The next year, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Noem clashed with the Oglala Sioux and the Cheyenne River Sioux over checkpoints they had erected at their borders to try to protect their people’s health.She called the posts illegal and threatened to take the two nations to court.

Noem has a history of “not engaging with the tribes in a relevant way,” said Ross Garelick Bell, a lobbyist for the Yankton and Rosebud Sioux tribes. “There’s no cooperation, it’s just, ‘Here’s what we’re doing.’ The federal government can’t do that. You need a[homeland security] secretary who knows what consultation and cooperation is.”

In 2021, as Trump escalated his rhetoric against migrants,Noem started a high-profile campaign against illegal immigration — despite South Dakota being some 1,500 miles from the southern border.

She became the first governor to send National Guard troops to Texas, with that first wave covered by a 1milliondonationfromaTennesseebillionaire.Thetotaltabofherstate’sGuarddutyinTexaswilltop1 million donation from a Tennessee billionaire. The total tabof her state’s Guard duty in Texas will top1milliondonationfromaTennesseebillionaire.Thetotaltabofherstate’sGuarddutyinTexaswilltop3 million.

Yet her relationship with the tribesreally broke down in 2024, when she kicked off the year with a fieryspeech before the legislature.

Noem said that the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border had turned it into a “war zone” and that “every state is now a border state.”

She continued: “Make no mistake, the cartels have a presence on several of South Dakota’s tribal reservations. Murders are being committed by cartel members on the Pine Ridge reservation and in Rapid City, and a gang called the ‘Ghost Dancers’ are affiliated with these cartels.”

Tribal leaders immediately pushed back.

“Definitely drugs get sold from the cartels to individuals and middle men and go to South Dakota. But there’s no actual presence in the state, let alone the reservations,” said Ryman LeBeau, the tribal chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux, which has the largest base of any reservation in South Dakota and is home to 10,000 people. “We felt like she was using negativity to raise her stature and bring more attention to herself so someone like Donald Trump would notice her.”

Despite the controversy over her initial remarks, Noem did not back down. In March, she went a step further, suggesting that Native American kids lack hope and parents who care. The news website South Dakota Searchlight reported that she also targeted tribal leaders,saying they focus “on a political agenda more than they care about actually helping somebody’s life look better.”

One by one, the tribes barred her. First the Oglala Sioux in February, then the Cheyenne River Sioux, then the Standing Rock Sioux. The others followed, with the Flandreau Santee Sioux becoming the ninth in late May.

“Instead of working with me, many of them have chosen to banish me,” Noem saidat a news conference that month. “I will ask them right back, why have they not banished the cartels?”

Brendan Johnson, a former U.S. attorney for South Dakota, said that to suggest that cartels use reservations as operating bases is a fundamental misunderstanding of the economics of the drug trade.

Drugs are smuggled across the border to larger cities such as Kansas City, Missouri, Denver and Chicago and thenflown into smaller rural communities, he explained in a recent interview. “These small communities are not lucrative targets for a cartel,” he said. “It would make no sense for them to set up some sort of business empire on the reservation.”

Noem repeated her charges about drug cartels at the May news conferenceand insisted she was only echoing what Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux, had said the previous year. During testimony before a Senate committee in Washington, Star Comes Out had pleaded for more federal resources for law enforcement.

But the governor also flashed a photo of Charles Merrival, a Rapid City motel manager with a history of violence and firearms possession, along with otherNative Americans she alleged were gang members and the type of drug traffickers who “often use our reservations to hide because of jurisdictional challenges we face.” On tribal land, the federal government has jurisdiction over most felonies, with tribal courts handling misdemeanors.

Prosecutors would later tell a federal judge that the Native American was indeed part of the “Ghost Dance Motorcycle Club.”The problem for Noem was that Merrival, 32, dealt meth out of Rapid City. He hadn’t been to Pine Ridge in years.

The governor had released this “false information,” prosecutor Kathryn Rich said, around the time she was sending the South Dakota National Guard to help patrol the southern border.

“Shouldn’t you make that decision based on truthful information, reliable, accurate information?” the judge asked, according to a court transcript of the November hearing.

“Well, if I was ever in a room with her, that would be one of many things I would say to her,” Rich replied. “All the agents were just as surprised as the attorney’s office … that she somehow made this leap that was not based in fact.”

Merrival was sentenced in late November to eight years in prison on federal drug conspiracy charges. By text from Pennington County jail_,_ he said he was “blindsided by the fact that Noem is choosing to blame me for whatever cartel activity she is alleging.” He believes her actions denied him the right to a fair legal process.

In court, both the prosecutor and defense attorney agreed that the governor’s release of the photo had complicated Merrival’s case. His lawyer filed a notice to appeal.

Isaac Stanley-Becker and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

clarification

After this article published, the Senate committee that will conduct Kristi L. Noem's nomination hearing postponed it from Wednesday to Friday. The article has been revised to reflect the new date.