By Simon Lewis and Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) – Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will wrap up a tour of Western Hemisphere nations in her new job as the U.S. envoy to a coalition against drug cartels on Wednesday, marking the start of a diminished role after she was fired by President Donald Trump earlier this month.
Noem, who continued to travel on a DHS jet with top aide Corey Lewandowski at her side, met Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa on Wednesday, who awarded her an order of merit.
The former congresswoman and governor of South Dakota, who arrived in Washington in January 2025 as one of Trump’s most prominent loyalists, now reports not to the president but to Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau as special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, according to a Trump official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.
Noem is expected to return to the United States later on Wednesday and is not anticipated to retain access to DHS aircraft afterward, the official said.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Noem’s new role. Asked about Noem’s use of the government plane and whether DHS officials had staffed the trip, an agency spokesperson said: “We are not going to comment on the whereabouts of our plane or DHS staff.”
SHIELD OF THE AMERICAS
The Shield of the Americas, launched on March 7, brings together mainly right-wing leaders from South America in what Trump has framed as an aggressive campaign to confront drug cartels, part of his administration’s broader effort to reassert U.S. dominance of the Western Hemisphere.
Noem began the trip while still formally the head of DHS, and flight tracking websites showed that she continued to travel on the agency’s Gulfstream G700 jet that was purchased during her tenure, visiting the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guyana before Ecuador.
In Costa Rica on Monday, Noem signed an initial agreement for the country to accept migrants deported from the United States who are nationals of third countries, which the U.S. Embassy in San José described as her “final act as Secretary and in her role as Shield of the Americas Envoy.”
Accompanying Noem on the trip was Lewandowski, according to photos posted of the trip by the U.S. Embassy in Guyana, which showed him by her side in meetings with Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali. The longtime Trump operative Lewandowski served as Noem’s aide at DHS and their close relationship drew scrutiny during her tenure. At a congressional hearing earlier this month, a Democratic lawmaker asked Noem directly whether she had had a sexual relationship with Lewandowski — a question Noem dismissed as “tabloid garbage.”
A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to explain why Lewandowski was on the trip, but said he would not be joining the department in any capacity. Lewandowski did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov in Tbilisi and Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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