Kristi Noem's Shield of the Americas office, the diplomatic post she received after losing her job as Homeland Security Secretary, is already struggling to function, with four officials placed on administrative leave and remaining staffers no longer showing up, the Daily Mail reported.
The White House ordered the leave actions, which hit Noem's inner circle at the fledgling office. Sources identified the four officials as former deputy chief of staff Troup Hemenway, ex-deputy general counsel Giovanna Cinelli, and junior staffers Josh King and Octavian Miller. The White House declined to comment.
Senior State Department officials told the Daily Mail that Noem held only one meeting this week, and conducted it virtually. The staff that remains has been dispersed through State Department headquarters or is working from home. An office that held an inaugural summit at Trump Doral Miami on March 7 now appears to be running on fumes barely a month later.
Noem was removed as Homeland Security Secretary in early March, losing her post atop the nation's largest law enforcement agency. The Shield of the Americas office was established to combat drug cartels, international criminal organizations, and migrant crime in the Western Hemisphere by coordinating across Homeland Security, the State Department, and the Pentagon.
Sources described the new role as a "soft landing", a way to reassign Noem rather than cut her loose entirely. But the landing has been anything but smooth.
The office moved into a building housing the Institute for Peace, which had spare space after being gutted by Elon Musk and his team of downsizers at DOGE. Even that arrangement carried friction. State Department officials were reportedly less than welcoming of Noem's operation, and the roles and responsibilities of the new office remained unclear to insiders.
Before her removal from DHS, Noem had already faced intense political pressure. Congressional Democrats pushed a criminal referral against her over testimony they characterized as perjury, part of a sustained campaign to undermine her credibility on immigration enforcement.
The staffing problems run deeper than the four officials placed on leave. With the staff already reportedly cut in half, the remaining team has stopped coming in. The Daily Mail described an office that has essentially emptied out.
One telling defection: Steven Munoz, Noem's former deputy chief of staff, was slated to follow her from DHS to the State Department. He never made the move. Instead, Munoz stayed at Homeland Security, using relationships with senior White House officials to remain in place.
That decision speaks volumes. When a deputy chief of staff chooses to stay at the old agency rather than follow the boss to a new assignment, the new assignment's prospects look dim.
The broader political environment around Noem's departure from DHS was already charged. Trump had previously defended Noem against Republican critics who questioned her DHS leadership, but the defense did not prevent her eventual removal.
The operational dysfunction at Shield of the Americas has unfolded alongside a series of personal embarrassments that have kept Noem in tabloid headlines rather than policy discussions.
Photos surfaced of Noem sitting next to Corey Lewandowski, described by the Daily Mail as her "lover", at a table in Guyana alongside the nation's president and other government leaders. Then came what the Daily Mail called a bigger development: the publication of photos of her husband, Bryon Noem, which the outlet said he had sent to online fetish models.
Bryon Noem had sat behind his wife at a congressional hearing last month as Democrats grilled her on personal matters rather than border security. That hearing itself drew criticism for its focus. Democrats used the DHS oversight hearing to press Noem on her personal life at the expense of substantive immigration questions, a pattern that looked more like political theater than genuine oversight.
Noem's belongings were packed up from Homeland Security headquarters after her early March departure. The Daily Mail reported that it contacted both the State Department and Noem for comment on the staffing collapse. No response was noted.
The stated mission of Shield of the Americas is one conservatives should support. Coordinating federal agencies to fight cartels, transnational criminal organizations, and migrant crime across the Western Hemisphere is exactly the kind of muscular, enforcement-first approach the administration promised.
But a mission without functioning staff is just a press release. The March 7 summit at Trump Doral Miami projected ambition. Weeks later, the office can't fill a conference room.
The political pressures on Noem have been relentless and not always fair. Senate clashes over her tenure included demands for her resignation and threats to hold up Trump nominees, moves driven at least partly by partisan calculation. And the Democratic push to pivot from DHS to other targets continued after she left, with Democrats quickly setting their sights on Pam Bondi once Noem was out of the picture.
Still, the facts on the ground are hard to spin. Four officials on leave. A deputy who refused to follow. An office where no one shows up. One virtual meeting in a week. And a leader who, by the Daily Mail's account, has withdrawn from public view.
Much remains unclear. No specific White House official has been identified as ordering the administrative leave. The exact authority that created the Shield of the Americas office has not been disclosed. And the agenda of that single virtual meeting, the only recorded activity this week, is unknown.
Whether this office can recover, get real staffing, and deliver on its cartel-fighting mandate is an open question. Whether Noem herself has the political capital left to lead it is another.
Good policy deserves competent execution. Right now, the people who were supposed to execute it are on leave, at home, or working somewhere else entirely. That's not a partisan problem. It's an operational one, and someone needs to fix it.