In 2021, South Dakota Gov Kristi Noem was preparing to announce that her state would be the first to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in response to an appeal from Texas. She was mobilizing the state’s forces in an unusual way, bankrolled by an out-of-state billionaire. Editing a press release, Noem no longer praised border-state governors but declared, “The border is a national security crisis.” The edits are included in emails and other documents released by the National Guard via a Freedom of Information Act request by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, D.C. The documents show how the governor positioned herself as a hard-liner on immigration 1,500 miles from the southern border. Noem's efforts, beginning with the deployment of about 50 members of the National Guard in the summer of 2021, intensified over the next three years. Noem ordered two additional deployments, paid for by state taxpayers. And she steadily escalated her rhetoric, the Washington Post reports. Noem told the state legislature this year, “South Dakota is ... affected by cartel presence on our tribal reservations; by the spread of drugs and human trafficking throughout our communities; and by the drain on our resources at the local, state and federal level.”
Politically, her work paid off. President-elect Trump chose her lead the Department of Homeland Security, a sprawling agency of 260,000 people charged with border enforcement, disaster response and other law enforcement responsibilities. A Tennessee billionaire and Republican donor, Willis Johnson, was so supportive of Noem’s efforts that he funded the initial 2021 deployment to the tune of $1 million. The private financing raised eyebrows in Washington, where congressional staffers questioned its viability. The deployments all together cost about $3.3 million, prompted questions about the legality of the private funding and helped fuel a bitter dispute between Noem and South Dakota’s Native American tribes after she alleged that cartel activity on reservations justified the National Guard’s deployment. Noem, a rancher and farmer who spent eight years in as a member of Congress before being elected governor in 2018, has used her perch in Pierre, S.D., to insert herself into the national conversation. Amid a drug crisis in 2019, she spent nearly $500,000 in state funds on an awareness campaign whose slogan — “Meth. We’re on it.” — was meant to convey a proactive response to drug abuse but prompted widespread ridicule because of its indelicate wording. “She’s always getting in front of TV cameras, flying to different parts of the country, trying to be in the spotlight,” said Aaron Aylward, a Republican state representative who heads the South Dakota legislature’s Freedom Caucus,
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