The Changing Face of Evil: 'ICE Barbie' Kristi Noem’s Transformation and Our Slide into American Fascism

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem—aka “ICE Barbie”—features prominently in a new series of ads released last month instructing undocumented immigrants to self-deport or risk being hunted down by the U.S. government. 

In the B-roll footage that plays in the background of the ads, Noem looks stoic as she walks alongside agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), her outfits indicating all of the very serious work she’s doing. Behold, there’s Noem in her CBP baseball cap, and there she is in her American flag beanie and ICE bulletproof vest! With no legal background, experience in law enforcement, or familiarity handling issues related to immigration and foreign policy, the former South Dakota governor sure manages to wear a lot of hats at DHS.

Just as she was in a previous set of ads released in April, here Noem is all pomp and pageantry. Her unmoving Utah curls and harsh “Republican makeup”—heavy on eyeliner, bronzer, and lashes—serve as a jarring juxtaposition to the propaganda spewing from her plumped, heavily lined lips.  

“We will find you, you will be fined thousands of dollars, detained, and forcefully removed from our country,” says Noem, her diamond-clad fingers and French tips poised in front of her fitted suit. In the press release announcing the latest propaganda from DHS, the federal agency noted the ads are “targeted toward all illegal aliens residing within the United States.”

Across DHS’s relatively short lifespan–the agency is barely into its 20s–there has never before been a secretary quite like Kristi Noem. And I argue that ICE Barbie’s appearance is subject to critique when it is that very attention to detail, down to the last of her obvious hair extensions, that allows her to star in the role. Her theatrics and infamous MAGA makeover aside, she is the least qualified, the least educated, and the least experienced person to run the agency. While the left largely treats Noem as a target for mockery, feminist writers, thinkers, and organizers who spoke to The Flytrap emphasized the unparalleled power she wields over the lives of millions of immigrants and the incredible dangers posed by the toxic stew of white femininity, xenophobia, opportunism, and MAGA lawlessness that Noem personifies.

After all, Noem changed her entire fucking face to fit MAGA norms, only to be sidelined for the VP role. No doubt her appointment as DHS secretary felt like a sad consolation prize, but one that nevertheless provided her with an opportunity to become a household name. 

Noem is sin vergüenza, wholly and unabashedly without shame.

According to Dr. C. Nicole Mason, Noem’s “performative ads” promoting self-deportation are primarily intended for an audience of one.

“It’s very clear she’s trying to further align herself with Trump by leaning into these very reckless and dangerous talking points,” said Mason, the president and CEO of Future Forward Women, a legislative exchange and policy network that works to advance progressive state and federal public policies. “But unfortunately, Noem’s rhetoric has very real implications for people’s lives and it sets the terms of debate and public discourse around immigration.”

Mason was “shocked” to see the DHS ads air on the streaming platforms Hulu and Pluto, leading her to wonder what it would feel like for an immigrant family watching TV together to be confronted by Noem effectively telling them: Go back where you came from.

Across the Trump administration, few are as willing as Noem to debase themselves on the world stage, and the DHS secretary’s evident desperation for power makes her one of Trump’s most ardent foot soldiers for authoritarianism. 

Noem is sin vergüenza, wholly and unabashedly without shame. 

She gleefully helps the Trump administration carry out its promise of mass deportations by simply expanding the pool of deportable immigrants or sidestepping the law entirely, allowing for the large-scale racial profiling of Latinos in Los Angeles, for example, or the illegal transfer of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s mega-prison where recently returned men say they were beaten and sexually assaulted. Under her watch, DHS also pumps out an unprecedented amount of propaganda in which Noem is the star. While the 53-year-old anti-immigrant influencer can’t define habeas corpus, she will certainly wear a $50K watch during her photo op marking the destruction of the constitutional provision. 

Noem’s trajectory is both uniquely Trumpian and a tale as old as time. 

“This is not new,” Mason said. “It’s a well-worn trope about power—women believe that to get ahead or advance in their careers, they must embrace or align themselves with men. By performing acceptable femininity, adopting masculine traits without threatening men, or attaching themselves to powerful men, they can gain proximity to influence. But the access is always conditional.”

Cruelty & Power 

In her 2006 book Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right, professor Catherine Rymph writes that Republican women’s division over feminism in the 1970s sparked a “paradoxical process” by which these women achieved a place in American politics. There are the more “independent-minded” Republican women wary of blind partisanship and suspicious of the way party politics function such as Nikki Haley, and then there are what we will call the Kristi Noems of the Republican world: women who espouse party loyalty and who are willing to work from within to bring about the political results they are personally most interested in. 

It is exceedingly difficult to believe that Noem has a larger vision for the world that she’s fighting for. Still, while she has never publicly identified as a feminist, the “godfearing” family woman has claimed to “support babies, moms, and families” (while doing the opposite), advocated for Trump to appoint women to high-ranking positions, and for her latest book posed at her desk with a placard that reads, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” This is flimsy evidence that Noem has deeper feelings about women and power outside of her own ambitions, but Sophie Lewis’ Enemy Feminisms certainly comes to mind as a reminder that feminism is not an inherent political good. 

According to longtime feminist writer Andi Zeisler, Noem now “belongs to Trump’s world,” and there is no going back to her former lowly role as the governor of South Dakota. She’ll go on to bigger and better things, becoming the kind of woman who will one day leave the ugly world of the federal government and use her platform to pursue more profitable and glamorous ventures, perhaps joining the revolving door of Trump associates who land their own Fox News shows. 

Unlike the last woman to head DHS, Kirstjen Nielsen, who largely failed to rehab her image and then mostly disappeared in shame after overseeing the family separation policy, Noem isn’t the type to go gentle into that South Dakota night. Her time as governor gives us a glimpse into her likely future as a grifter. Remember when she was paid to make a promotional video for a Texas dentist? Or how about the dark money group that paid her personal company $80,000 for no reason at all?

In the United States, xenophobia can certainly be lucrative. Just ask the CEOs of multibillion-dollar private prison companies that oversee the detention system, or explore the Biden-era activities of current White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who is now among more than a dozen Trump appointees who own stock in ICE contractors like Palantir. But the Trump administration’s most prominent immigrant haters take decidedly different approaches to their “work.” The Nosferatu-like Miller largely prefers shadowy machinations, while Noem’s fledgling tough-talking anti-immigrant brand is focused on churning out cruelty content. 

Zeisler said that Noem reminds her of Sarah Palin—another Republican who tried to set herself apart from other women by playing up her toughness. Palin infamously created a new archetype for conservative women: the ferocious “mama grizzly.” Noem, a grandmother and mother of three, clearly prefers to project youthfulness, steering away from the matriarchal in favor of the toxic and deranged, like when she proudly wrote of shooting her own dog. 

“It's unsettling that she seems to be playing a villain role that she really enjoys,” said Zeisler, a Salon culture writer and co-founder of Bitch Media. “It's not a secret that Trump picked this cabinet like he was casting a reality show, and in that analogy Noem is the person who right off the bat—without anyone asking—is like, ‘I didn’t come here to make friends!’ She's trying to be the best shitty person she can be. She's similar to Trump in that they both confuse bombast with leadership and cruelty with power.”

Playing the Long Game 

Mason said there is something else that colors Noem’s leadership: She works for one of the most anti-woman administrations in the history of the country. The second coming of Trump is the escalation of his first term, when he appointed the Supreme Court lineup that would overturn Roe v. Wade in the interim. It is his revenge fantasy in which hospitals deny emergency abortions to pregnant people on the brink of sepsis or death.

“What’s so ironic is that many of the harmful policies and actions that have an outsized impact on women—from cuts to Medicaid and health research funding to mass firings to immigration raids to increased student loan payments—are being carried out by women,” Mason said. “About one-third of Trump’s cabinet picks are women and many of these women will do just about anything for power or a seat at the table, including embodying toxic masculine leadership traits.” 

Mason and others noted the unparalleled level of internalized misogyny harbored by women in Trump’s orbit, as evidenced by both their willingness to set the rights of other women ablaze to maintain a modicum of power and by their adherence to Trump’s preferred gender norms. 

For Noem in particular, her appearance has been the subject of a great deal of media attention—even in right-wing media. While Noem has referred to this as “horrible misogyny,” Zeisler argues the DHS secretary’s looks shouldn’t be off the table.  

“Kristi Noem's looks are now inextricable from her actions, because both are part of a role she's chosen to play,” Zeisler told The Flytrap. “She changed herself physically to gain the favor of a cosplay dictator—that's relevant. So I do think it's a useful conversation if the people having it can talk about the dynamics of internalized misogyny without defaulting to actual misogyny. But that's a pretty big ‘if.’”

It’s an aesthetic born of social media, a look that signifies substance is unimportant in this era and it’s only the superficial qualities of a person or policy that really matter. 

For abolitionist feminist writer and organizer Crystal, who is using a pseudonym for fear of repercussions as a non-citizen, Noem’s MAGA makeover is a sign of a significant societal shift. Unlike vile political predecessors such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Noem’s face is designed for reality TV.

“When I’m waiting in the security line at the airport and I see the DHS video of Kristi Noem talking about protecting America's borders, I know I'm actively being lied to by a person who would drive a stake through someone's heart if she thought it would advance her position within the Trump agenda,” Crystal said. “The face of evil has really changed and Noem literally looks like someone who represents the cruelty of the MAGA movement. It’s kind of remarkable that you can see that on someone's face.”

What the media has failed to convey about Noem’s changing appearance is that it’s not intended to appear natural or even attractive, Crystal told The Flytrap. It’s an aesthetic born of social media, a look that signifies substance is unimportant in this era and it’s only the superficial qualities of a person or policy that really matter. 

In our post-truth world that was largely ushered in by Trump, a man whose orange, leathery skin and bizarre bouffant also reek of the superficial, Crystal said it makes sense that people who look completely fake are delivering blatant lies to the American public—whether that’s admonishing reporters for asking about the administration’s obvious racial profiling or firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner for the “rigged” results of the very real July jobs report.

“This is a different era, it’s nihilistic and there’s a kind of soullessness to everything,” Crystal said. “There is gleeful cruelty. The lies are much more blatant and shameless. The administration is so clearly aware of its deception and it no longer makes any effort to hide it and that, to me, seems very representative of Noem’s look.”

This was echoed by Jacinta González, who’s organized for immigrant rights across the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations and now serves as the head of programs at MediaJustice, an organization focused on the communities most harmed by inequities in media and technology. Like other DHS heads, González said Noem’s role requires that she fall in line with the administration’s immigration enforcement priorities. But unlike previous DHS secretaries, Noem seems most concerned with the veneer of mass deportations. 

“We understand they’re pushing xenophobia. We understand they’re pushing for mass deportations, but with Noem, it’s almost like the narrative around mass deportations matters more than the actual infrastructure of what that requires. Looking successful at immigration enforcement matters more than the reality of it. With Noem, we have a person who really seems to love creating that facade,” González said.

This hell wrought by Trump and his minions will not stop with immigration enforcement.

Noem’s ability to weave fantastical alternate realities was on display earlier this month when the DHS secretary announced she was removing age limits for new ICE recruits, allowing teenagers to join the federal agency that was formerly restricted to those 21 and up. The policy shift, which also came with the promise of a $50,000 signing bonus and up to $60,000 in student loan forgiveness, indicates the agency is having trouble filling positions. Still, on Fox News Noem maintained that ICE’s recruitment efforts have been “extremely successful” and that the federal agency has received more than 80,000 applications for 10,000 available jobs.

Only time will tell if the world will remember Noem as the lying, evil ghoul she is—or if she will even make it through the entirety of Trump’s second term. After all, the president jettisoned a billionaire benefactor without much ceremony. In the grand scheme of things, Noem is wholly expendable.

What will have a far more lasting impact than a figurehead like Noem is the unprecedented amount of resources the “Big Beautiful Bill” funneled into immigration enforcement: roughly $170 billion for ICE and CBP, with $75 billion in extra funding for ICE. When an already rogue agency long known for its cruelty and lack of accountability is given immigration enforcement quotas while simultaneously becoming the most well-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government, American fascism is here to stay. A future Democratic administration hell-bent on playing Republicans’ game certainly will not save us. 

Leading up to the 2024 election, Democrats showed us that rather than pulling the country away from Trump’s xenophobic rage, the party simply tried to match his energy. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris talked incessantly of getting tougher on the border. Broadly, Democrats walked “a harder line” on immigration, which was seen as the party’s “biggest weakness” that they were trying to “turn the tables on.” 

And this hell wrought by Trump and his minions will not stop with immigration enforcement. It has already affected many people born in the United States, and that group will only expand. 

In Los Angeles, ICE has detained multiple U.S. citizens, and the agency continues to carry out raids in the city’s working class Latino communities in violation of a restraining order. These raids have proven deadly. In July, farmworker Jaime Alanis García fell from a greenhouse, and earlier this month, day laborer Carlos Roberto Montoya was struck by a car on a freeway. Both men were fleeing ICE agents during workplace raids, and both died from their injuries. 

“I don’t think the American public fully understands the scaling up of ICE and law enforcement’s tech, surveillance, and overall power,” González explained. “It will not end with the criminalization of migration, and what’s terrifying about Kristi Noem is her loyalty to Trump and the power she has right now, to turn up the dial on this infrastructure and invite in a culture where it doesn’t matter what laws you break. It could take decades to undo what Noem has started.”

This piece was edited by Christine Grimaldi and copyedited by Chrissy Stroop.

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