WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s relationship with U.S. Coast Guard officials has become strained throughout her first year leading the department, according to two U.S. officials, a Coast Guard official and a former Coast Guard official.
The tensions between Noem and the only branch of the U.S. military overseen by DHS stem from some early decisions she made that rankled Coast Guard officials, including a verbal directive to shift Coast Guard resources from a search-and-rescue mission to find a missing service member, the sources said.
Noem’s leadership at DHS has created a specific split in the Coast Guard. Many rank-and-file members are motivated by her approach, where she showcases their work by joining them on operations and visiting their ships. Some more senior officials, however, see that approach as taking away from the Coast Guard’s traditional missions.
The dynamic with more senior officials has only worsened in recent months as Noem oversaw a tenfold increase in the use of Coast Guard aircraft for migrant deportations, which has strained their limited resources, the sources said. The increase was captured in data compiled by ICE Flight Monitor, a non-profit group that tracks deportation flights.
“It puts so much stress on the Wing,” the Coast Guard official said, referring to the branch’s aviation units.
Noem’s focus on meeting the Trump administration’s deportation quotas appears poised to further impact Coast Guard operations in the coming months, according to new guidance recently issued to Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento this year. Based on DHS priorities, the air station, which is among those responsible for a majority of deportation flights, has designated its first priority to be the transport of detained immigrants on its C-27 aircraft within the U.S., according to multiple U.S. officials familiar with the orders.
The new orders moved search-and-rescue operations, which have long been the Coast Guard’s core mission, to a lower priority, the officials familiar with the orders said. They said counternarcotics efforts and Coast Guard training are prioritized above search-and-rescue operations.
The dissonance between Noem’s priorities and senior Coast Guard officials is a lesser-known part of the fallout from President Donald Trump’s mass deportations policy, and is largely playing out behind the scenes. Coast Guard officials have privately raised concerns with each other and confided in former officials about some of Noem’s directives and use of Coast Guard resources to service her and the administration’s priorities, the current and former Coast Guard officials said.
At times, the tensions have escalated into confrontations, the sources said. In one contentious incident in May, Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, berated Coast Guard flight staff and threatened to fire them for taking off without one of the secretary’s personal items on board — a heated blanket, according to the current and former Coast Guard officials.
“There is a general atmosphere of ‘keep your head down; you don’t want to be on the firing line,’” the former Coast Guard official said.
A spokesperson for the Coast Guard referred all questions about the reporting in this story to DHS.
A spokesperson for DHS denied that there was guidance to Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento that prioritized transporting immigrants first over search-and-rescue operations. “That’s ridiculous. No such guidance was ordered,” the DHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The Coast Guard is always ready to respond to search and rescue missions, and it carefully balances all operations and mission requirements.”
The spokesperson said in response to this story, “The entire premise of your story is incorrect, and these attacks are nothing more than a politicized deep state effort to undermine President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and distract from the historic successes that the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard have achieved since he returned to office.”
The tension between some Coast Guard officials and Noem began after a 23-year-old Coast Guardsman went overboard into the Pacific Ocean from the cutter Waesche on Feb. 4, 2025, shortly after the Senate confirmed Noem into her role, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official.
The Coast Guard had surged ships and aircraft to the Pacific to find the Coast Guardsman. Hours into the search, Noem learned that a Coast Guard C-130 that was supposed to fly detained migrants from California to Texas was among the aircraft over the Pacific looking for the missing Coast Guardsman, and she intervened, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official.
Noem verbally instructed the Acting Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Kevin Lunday, to pull the plane off the search-and-rescue mission so it would not miss the migrant flight as part of the DHS’s so-called Alien Expulsion Operations, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official. Lunday notified the National Command Center, which ordered the C-130 to fly to San Diego while other aircraft and ships involved in the search continued, according to one of the U.S. officials and the current Coast Guard official.
In an effort to keep the C-130 searching for the missing service member, the regional Coast Guard command in San Diego scrambled to find two available C-27s that could fly the migrants to Texas, which freed up the C-130 to continue searching for the missing Coast Guardsman after about an hour, the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official said.
The search ultimately went on for 190 hours covering 19,000 square miles, but the Coast Guardsman was never found. It’s not clear that Noem’s directive to pull the C-130 had any impact on the search, particularly given the Coast Guard found alternative aircraft that allowed it to return to the effort.
The DHS spokesperson said a C-130 was shifted from migrant flights to the search-and-rescue operation in the Pacific on Feb. 4 and continued on that mission until the search was suspended. The spokesperson said “the C-130 never left the search” and that there is no documentation it was diverted away from the search-and-rescue operation.
Despite the differing narratives, the incident left Coast Guard officials with a negative impression of Noem, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official. The incident reflected a clash of cultures between Noem’s leadership style and Coast Guard officials, the sources said.
“The primary mission was search-and-rescue,” the former Coast Guard official said. “And now the number one stated mission of the Coast Guard is border security, that is a cultural change that the culture hasn’t quite caught up to.”
The official added that under Noem’s leadership “you never know what’s going to happen” and that morale at Coast Guard headquarters “is terrible.”
Asked about low morale within the Coast Guard, the DHS spokesperson said, “That’s armchair speculation that’s out of touch with the reality in the service right now.”
The DHS spokesperson also said the Coast Guard has used C-130 and C-27 aircraft to transport migrants “on an as-needed basis” and said its focus on immigration “is nothing new or unusual.”
Under Noem’s leadership, more than 750 Coast Guard flights have been redirected from regular missions like maritime patrols and search and rescue efforts, to instead fly detained migrants to deportation hubs, according to ICE Flight Monitor. Coast Guard flights carrying migrants jumped last year from 14 in June to 149 in November, according to the group.
A former Republican governor of South Dakota, Noem stepped into her high-profile role with a mandate from Trump to conduct a mass deportation campaign that was the focus of her attention and that of the senators who oversaw her nomination process. Neither Noem nor any lawmaker mentioned the Coast Guard at her January 2025 confirmation hearing, and she was confirmed by the Senate with the support of seven Democrats.
Several of the Democrats who voted to confirm Noem have taken issue with her management of other aspects of the department., Two — Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Andy Kim, D-N.J. — told NBC News last June that they regretted supporting her confirmation.
Noem has increasingly been under scrutiny in recent weeks amid ongoing immigration enforcement raids in major American cities that are backed by the White House and have sparked protests. She took a leading role in the administration’s public response to federal agents’ fatal shootings of American citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in separate incidents in Minneapolis in January. Like other senior Trump officials, Noem quickly characterized Good and Pretti as the aggressors before any investigation into the shootings.
While Trump shook up his immigration team within days of Pretti’s shooting, sending border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, he has stood by Noem. The president has rejected calls for her resignation from Democrats and some Republicans.
“Look, look she was in charge of the border,” Trump told “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas earlier this month that Noem deserves credit for closing the border but may have a “public relations” problem. “I think she’s doing a very good job,” he said in an Oval Office interview. “She’s not getting credit for the job that she does.”
Noem, who has also rankled critics by appearing in front of detained migrants at a prison in El Salvador and budgeting $200 million for deportation ads that feature her, got off to a rocky start with some of her Coast Guard subordinates when she evicted the newly fired Commandant Linda Fagan from housing at Joint Base Anacostia Bolling with three hours’ notice in February, NBC News reported.
At the time, Homeland Security Department officials insisted to NBC News that Fagan was not thrown out so that the housing could be provided to the secretary. Noem later moved into the home.
“Secretary Noem is paying fair market value for her temporary use of the facility as she faces heightened security threats following the publication of her apartment by a tabloid,” a second DHS spokesperson said last year.
Noem has also raised eyebrows among Coast Guard officials over her approach to traveling on Coast Guard aircraft, which is a standard practice for Homeland Security secretaries, according to the U.S. official, the Coast Guard official, the former Coast Guard official and one of the U.S. officials.
In October, Noem sought to replace the Coast Guard aircraft that has traditionally flown the Homeland Security secretary with two new Gulfstream jets at a cost of $170 million. Some Coast Guard officials viewed the purchase to replace the aging aircraft as an unnecessary expense, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official, the former Coast Guard official and two DHS officials.
The two DHS officials said the Coast Guard officials were told by a senior DHS official not to raise their concerns about the purchase of the new Gulfstream jets.
“We were kept completely out of the loop on those Gulfstreams. I wanted to know what money they used for those Gulfstreams,” one of the DHS officials said. “But basically, we were shut down.”
Democrats objected to the purchase of two jets, saying only one was needed and resources should instead be spent on mission aircraft such as C-130’s. The top Democrats on the House Appropriations and Homeland Security committees wrote a letter to Noem in October criticizing the purchase. “Your first priority should be to organize, train and equip a Coast Guard that is strong enough to meet today’s mission requirements,” the lawmakers wrote. “Instead, it appears your first priority is your own comfort.”
Noem has defended the decision, saying the new jets were needed to support Coast Guard missions and noted that Congress appropriated the funding for them.
The DHS spokesperson said the department received one of the Gulfstream jets last month and is expected to receive the second one this fall. “These aircraft are the products of a planned, and long-needed update to the Coast Guard’s long-range command and control aircraft, which are essential for mission readiness and safety,” the spokesperson said, adding that they are for senior DHS and military officials.
Noem recently flew on one of the newly purchased Gulfstreams to Phoenix, Ariz., to tout DHS’s accomplishments on the southern border over the past year.
Typically, government planes that are used for members of the executive branch’s travel are returned to what is called a “sterile state” after each flight, which includes the removal of all personal items of the individuals who had traveled on it, according to the U.S. official.
But Noem liked the idea of keeping some personal items on board, including a heated blanket, for her convenience, so a storage cabinet on the aircraft was reserved for that purpose in a way that ran counter to typical protocols for most government aircraft, one of the U.S. officials and the current Coast Guard official said.
“The claim that the secretary would misuse government property is ridiculous,” the DHS spokesperson said. “Secretary Noem is most conscientious steward of government resources DHS has ever had.”
Noem’s team clashed with Coast Guard staff last year after the Coast Guard plane she’d been flying on broke down and she had to fly back to Washington, D.C., on a back-up jet, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official , and the former Coast Guard official.
While flying on the back up plane, Noem realized she had left some personal items, including her blanket, on the plane that had broken down, the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official said.
When Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, was informed that some of her personal items had been left behind, he yelled at the Coast Guard flight staff and threatened to fire them, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official.
The Coast Guard pilot came out of the cockpit to see what was happening, and Lewandowski insisted the plane return to where the broken-down jet was located to collect the secretary’s items, the U.S. official, the current Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official said.
When the pilot refused, Lewandowski announced the pilot was relieved of duty, according to the U.S. official, the current Coast Guard official and the former Coast official. The pilot explained that if he was fired he would need to land the plane immediately while another pilot was found to continue the mission to Washington, the U.S. official, the current Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official said.
Lewandowski ultimately relented and calmer heads prevailed by the end of the trip, the two U.S. officials, the current U.S. official and the former Coast Guard official said. The Wall Street Journal reported some details of the confrontation on Friday.
While the DHS spokesperson responded in an email exchange to questions about other elements of this story, the spokesperson did not provide answers to questions about the confrontation between Lewandowski and Coast Guard staff on this flight.
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