Insiders Reveal ICE Barbie Is Leaving DHS With a Major Problem

Kristi Noem is apparently leaving the Department of Homeland Security with dozens of unsigned contracts on her desk—including payments owed to a facility holding migrant children.

The backlog is the fallout from a policy Noem, 54, imposed that required every DHS contract worth $100,000 or more—which covers nearly all of the agency’s agreements—to receive her personal sign-off before taking effect. The rule proved so disruptive that some vendors began billing the department in chunks of $99,999 each just to get paid.

“From everything that I’ve heard, it’s still a giant s--t show up there,” a source familiar with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) delays told the outlet, referring to DHS leadership.

“The ramifications of her tenure are going to be felt for years and years and years and years,” the source added. “We’re not really going to know exactly how bad it is until we have a major hurricane that unfortunately impacts someplace in the United States.”

The disruption, Axios says, is already reaching real facilities. At the family detention center in Dilley, Texas—the only long-term immigration facility in the country holding migrants’ children—government payments lapsed in early March, with roughly 700 people detained there as of mid-February.

CoreCivic, which operates Dilley and several other detention sites, said it was “hopeful the federal government will resolve budget matters to enable resumption of payments,” adding it remained focused on running “safe, humane facilities.” A contract covering Camp East Montana, a facility in Texas that held close to 3,000 detainees a day in mid-February, expired at the end of February without renewal. The facility’s operator, Acquisition Logistics LLC, could not be reached for comment by Axios.

New Jersey’s Delaney Hall, which held roughly 900 detainees last month, is also operating without a current payment after its government deal lapsed. Geo Group, the contractor, declined to comment to Axios. Dozens of small county jails that contracted with ICE to hold detainees are also owed payments, according to the outlet.

The situation has been made worse by the partial government shutdown that began Feb. 14, sparked by the standoff over DHS immigration policies. It has touched most of the agency’s 23 sub-agencies, including ICE, Customs and Border Protection, FEMA, the TSA, and the Secret Service.

As the Beast reported on Monday, DHS insiders have warned that Noem and her “special government employee” and de facto chief of staff Corey Lewandowski, 52, face investigations and potentially worse over their tenure at the agency. “They’re f---ed,” a DHS source told the Beast.

His unpaid role and long-rumored romantic relationship with Noem drew withering scrutiny at Noem’s final congressional hearings.

Congressional leaders also grilled Noem last week over the department’s slow distribution of FEMA disaster relief funds. The contract logjam has also stalled construction of Trump’s border wall—just 36 miles of which had been completed as of mid-February, despite nearly 2,000 miles being funded under Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”

Lewandowski defended the sign-off policy to Axios, claiming it had saved $15 billion last year. “For 23 years nobody ... ever reviewed the spending of that department,” he told the outlet, adding that agreements typically cleared Noem’s desk within two days.

Noem—who became the first Cabinet member fired in Trump’s second term when she was dismissed on March 5 and moved to a newly created post as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas—is due to hand DHS to Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, 48, on March 31.

Mullin did not respond to Axios’s request for comment on whether he would continue Noem’s sign-off policy. Lewandowski, expected to follow her out of the building, declined to say whether he would recommend the system to her successor.