The Voice in the Deportation Machine

How Tricia McLaughlin defends Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

A day after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was on the fiftieth floor of One World Trade Center, holding a press conference. While posted in front of three uniformed officers standing stock-still like royal guards, Noem trumpeted recent local action by DHS, which oversees ICE: “We are on offense,” she declared, against “scumbags.” Addressing the events in Minneapolis, Noem insisted that the ICE agent who killed Good was acting in self-defense. And she revealed what she believed to be the underlying culprit for Good’s death: “provocative talk” from public officials critical of ICE that was “inciting people to take action and perpetuate violence.” Just to Noem’s right, wearing a blue blazer, was Tricia McLaughlin, DHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs—who has become a master of “provocative talk.”