Fresh off gaudily posing before Venezuelans shipped to a brutal El Salvador prison – which is a war crime – part-time DHS Secretary and “embarrassment to hair extensions” Kosplay Kristi Noem just posed with ICE thugs in Arizona prepping to “get (some) dirtbags off the street.” Rocking yet another Nazi outfit – “Every day is Halloween for this lady” – she alas also held a rifle aimed straight at one of the ICE heads. Also, shouldn’t she be in D.C. trying not to deport the wrong people? Asking for many friends.
Elect a reality TV hack, get a reality TV government, with plenty of dress-up to distract the poorly educated. Cue Kristi Noem, former South Dakota Snow Queen, college dropout, wife, mother, rancher, Nazi, cosmetically enhanced aspiring Instagram model, bimbette attention-seeker and America’s reigning Queen of Cosplay.
As governor, Noem earned the name Barnyard Barbie from alarmed constituents for her COVID denialism, and all nine of the state’s indigenous tribes banned her from their lands after suggesting tribal leaders were colluding with and profiting from Mexican drug cartels.
Now she’s evidently found her odious peeps with the current Best-In-Show regime, where she’s stayed busy playing make-believe, always elaborately coiffed and made-up, from riding a horse (Border Barbie) to wrangling hoses (Firefighting Barbie): “Different action outfit for every day of the week.”
Last month, in one week, she flew sat in the cockpit of a Lockheed C-130 surveillance plane out of the Coast Guard base in Alaska, joined a Coast Guard Maritime Security Response Team on the water out of California (“Always ready”), rode a four-wheeler along the border wall at Nogales, tagged along to a (staged?) cocaine bust at San Diego’s San Ysidro Port of Entry, complete with K-9 dogs who seemed nervous near her puppy-killing vibes.
The packed photo-op schedule left observers suggesting DOGE look into what we’re spending on her costume changes; others wondered when she’ll unveil her limited-edition line of action figures or at least a Baywatch ICE Barbie doll, argued the dog-and-pony shows likely meant the workers couldn’t really work, noted her “hair, makeup, and wardrobe team is logging a lot of miles,” and helpfully added, “There’s an opening for a pole dancer in Las Vegas.”
Her most infamous piece of political theater was her March appearance, complete with $60,000 gold Rolex, fitted French shirt tuck, “pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face” and ball-cap on her mismatched hair extensions, before hundreds of Venezuelan prisoners in a brutal El Salvador prison we’re using to disappear enemies of her regime.
Behind her, the inmates stand silent, unmoving, hands at their sides or clasped in front of them, with others further back “stacked like cordwood” on metal bunks, posed by their jailers, “every piece of this visual carefully engineered, a staged display of dominance to thrill the base, to dominate, isolate, terrorize, power over law, cruelty as spectacle.”
Noem “pauses in front of a cage where human beings have been posed to her liking,” and sends her vicious message to “criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW. If you do not leave, we will hunt you down.”
Many observed that what Noem did – using prisoners’ bodies as weapons of political war – is a crime against humanity that violates international law under Articles 13 and 14 of the Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners from “insult (and) public curiosity.”
They also noted such abuse is unsurprising from a cabal of hacks for whom deportations, like much else, are largely about optics. Still, they argued, democracies have standards of treatment for prisoners; they also have due process and legal pathways for those seeking refuge, and blasted Noem as a vile bitch, an evil ghoul, a Sturmabteilung (storm trooper) “making a dominatrix video for her Nazi audience.”
The Bulwark‘s Jonathan Last was blunt on the “Stasi-like DHS kidnappings and gulag photo-op. The message: America is no longer a shining city on a hill… It no longer stands on the side of liberty. This is the land of wolves now.”
That’s even more tragically so after multiple press reports found no criminal records for up to 90% of the Venezuelan migrants ICE scooped up into an El Salvador prison; a few had records of minor, non-violent crimes; a sliver were maybe gang members – in contrast to the likely 75% of bigots targeting them in a deadly stunt who are clearly criminals.
Despite the gross illegality – and their nonsense about “waste” – they now plan to spend an obscene $45 billion in two years – more than double what USAID spent each year, and ten timeswhat ICE spent on all 2024 operations – ramping up private prisons and concentration camps to hold victims, including innocents “accidentally” vanished: “These things happen, too bad, so sad.”
And officials hope to get more efficient: The head of ICE just said he wants to “get better at treating this like a business (with) a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”
Lyons was one of a series of Trump administration speakers at the 2025 Border Security Expo at the Phoenix convention center, praised Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans, the 1798 law that was last used during the second world war to intern Japanese Americans.
Noem promised to expand on its use to more efficiently deport immigrants. Lyons also called the act “amazing” hopes that the agency can utilize artificial intelligence to “free up bed space” and “fill up airplanes”, allowing Ice to deport immigrants at a quicker pace, doge help look for “voter fraud”, broaden Ice’s mandate.
Now all immigrants without legal status are prioritized for arrest, including those who have been checking in and cooperating with authorities.
Meanwhile, Queen of Cosplay Kristi ‘Lookit-me’ Noem is still at it. On Tuesday, she surfaced “all dolled up on the streets of Phoenix, with flak jacket, full hair and makeup and, of course, that $50K Rolex, looking like she was ready to storm the city (Ballistic Barbie).”
As usual, she posted a video. “Here we are with Marco and Brian today,” she prattled, standing between two beefy ICE goons. “They’re letting me roll with them…We’re going to go out and pick up somebody who I think is…got charges of human trafficking.”
Then she praised “the good work they do every day…working to make America safe.” Alas, as she spoke, “Racism Barbie with Puppy-Murdering Action Rifle” was in fact extremely unsafely, also laughably awkwardly, holding her M4 rifle pointed at the head of the tatted, bicep-bulging guy on her left.
Sorry, we don’t know if it was Marco or Brian; these white supremacists all look alike.
After 100 agents found three victims, she posted, “Human traffickers. Drug Smugglers….(We’re) arresting these dirtbags and getting them off of (sic) our streets.” But safe gun owners were horrified by her clueless “fascism on parade.
Never hold your gun like this.” Arizona Rep/ former Marine Ruben Gallego: “1. Close your ejection port. 2. If you have no rounds in the chamber why do you have a magazine inserted? 3. Why are you flagging the guy next to you? 4. Stop deporting people without due process.”
Others: “That’s what happens when you want the clothes but don’t live the life,” “Conservatives need a distinct aesthetic, but (the) Bukele visual isn’t it,” “This way she doesn’t actually have to do her job,” “Were any dogs killed?” “It’s a community theater production of a government,” “Nazi Barbie Fun Fact: The end with the hole is the shooty end,” “This is very Plan 9 from Outer Space,” and from a guy at a legal non-profit, “If Secretary Noem personally shoots or arrests you (or your dog), please email me.” It takes a village.
“Capturing a person against their will without due process is called kidnapping. Transporting them to another country without due process is called human trafficking. A squalid extrajudicial prison for people found guilty of no crime is called a concentration camp.” – David Slack, insisting words matter
This article was originally published on Common Dreams and republished here, with permission, under a Creative Commons license. See our third-party content disclaimer.
