Republican senator melts down over Trump administration's deportations

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) joined his Democrat colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee in castigating Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday, not only for her past treatment of animals but for her treatment of illegal aliens.

After characterizing the Jan. 6 protesters whom President Donald Trump pardoned as "thugs" and stressing his support for law enforcement, Tillis suggested in his self-described "performance evaluation" that he is "disappointed" with Noem because she is allegedly "running numbers that Stephen Miller wants out of the White House."

'Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.'

"We just want numbers! We want a thousand a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day, because numbers matter, right? No, they don't matter," added Tillis, who is not running for re-election. "Quality matters, not quantity — quality."

Although the senator did not afford Noem an opportunity to respond at length at any point during his tirade, the secretary later noted on X that "thanks to President Trump's leadership and the dedicated work of DHS personnel, our department has achieved historic results and made communities safer."

Noem indicated:

Nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the United States. [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has arrested over 1,500 Known or Suspected Terrorists (KSTs) and more than 7,700 gang members. Fentanyl trafficking at the southern border has dropped by more than half compared to the same period in 2024. Of the more than 450,000 unaccompanied alien children lost under the Biden administration, 145,000 have been located under President Trump.

The DHS indicated in January that there were over 675,000 deportations and an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations in Trump's first year back in office.

RELATED: Government-paid traffickers? Noem testifies Biden administration funded abuse of migrant kids

Kristi Noem. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Tillis, adopting a tone he did not previously employ when addressing Noem's predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, suggested that the immigration crackdown overseen by the secretary — in which some American citizens have been detained — has been a "disaster" and that the way she has been "going about deporting [migrants] is wrong."

The senator cast doubt on whether the fatal shootings of anti-ICE radicals Alex Pretti and Renee Good were justifiable, then turned his attention to Noem's admissions in her memoir, "No Going Back," specifically her decisions to kill an "untrainable" dog and an unruly goat.

"You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices!" said Tillis.

"At that same lunch hour, you killed a goat, and you killed the goat because you said it was behaving badly."

"My point is those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis," said Tillis.

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