DHS chief Kristi Noem saddles up on horseback to survey Texas region where Border Patrol was falsely accused of racism
Giddyap!
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem donned a cowboy hat and boots and mounted a trusty steed last weekend for her first tour of the southern border since her confirmation.
Noem joined Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas, Sunday morning, the same area made infamous several years back when now-unemployed ex-VP Kamala Harris falsely accused agents of whipping Haitian migrants as a crowd of nearly 14,000 crossed into the US illegally.
“The men and women of Border Patrol are ENERGIZED and HAPPY again because they get to do their job. They are able to fulfill their mission to keep America safe,” Noem wrote in an X post Monday.
She also lambasted her predecessor Alejandro Mayorkas, whom she said “rode over the Border Patrol and didn’t let them do their jobs” in an earlier post sharing video of her leading a group of around a dozen border agents on horseback along the dusty route.
Del Rio had been a hotbed of illegal crossing activity under the Biden administration, regularly seeing 4,000 crossings or more per day in December 2023, when the crisis peaked.
But that number started falling almost immediately upon President Trump taking office Jan. 20, with just 60 crossings recorded on a Sunday several weeks ago.
Harris embarrassed herself and made national headlines in 2021 after she reacted to a handful of photos of agents on horseback in Del Rio and falsely accused the agents of being racist.
“Human beings should not be treated that way,” Harris told the brain trust on “The View” just days after the controversy. “It also invoked images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, it has been used against African Americans during times of slavery.”
The claims that border agents whipped the migrants, who are black, were later debunked by both the photographer who took the pictures and, later, an official Customs and Border Protection investigation.
Not only were her slanderous claims thoroughly exposed as bogus, but the agent in the photograph — whose name was withheld to protect his identity — later went on to win a Border Patrol Achievement award from the agency.
Harris has never acknowledged or apologized for her statements.