Taxpayers in South Dakota paid a whopping $150,000 for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to jet-set across the country last year, an analysis from the Associated Press found.
Camera-ready Noem—who has garnered the nickname “ICE Barbie” for dolling up for photo ops at immigration raids and detention centers—racked up the charges during her tenure as governor of South Dakota when President Donald Trump was campaigning for president.
That bills include almost $8,000 for plane tickets to a right-wing conference in Paris, a book tour through New York, and a bear-hunting trip to Canada with her niece, according to the AP. Noem also spent money for “numerous” trips to Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump lived before assuming office in January.
The news agency also reported Noem spent roughly $2,200 on a visit to a Texas dental clinic, which drew scrutiny after Noem posted a video showcasing her new pearly whites on Instagram last March.
A spokesperson for Noem declined to answer detailed questions about the expenses but said Noem paid out of her own pocket for trips that were not connected to her work as governor.
“Unfortunately, bad guys tend to make threats against high-profile public officials,” the spokesperson told the AP. “When it was a political or personal trip, she paid for her own travel out of her political or personal funds.”
Noem has repeatedly refused to disclose how much her various trips cost South Dakota taxpayers before she stepped down to assume her new role as Trump’s secretary for Homeland Security in the wake of his victory at the November polls.
The revelations add to the fevered debate about wasteful government expenditure as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency hacks away at the federal government.
“It seems like an incredible amount of money,” Taffy Howard, a Republican state senator in South Dakota who’d previously clashed with the former Governor over her travel expenses, told the AP.
It’s also not the first time Noem’s spending has come under scrutiny. Back in 2021, she came under fire for allegedly using underpaid prison labor to bag herself a hand-carved wooden desk worth $9,000.
Critics also took aim at the MAGA firebrand for refusing to allocate money from South Dakota’s Emergency and Disaster Fund to flood-ravaged areas of the state last summer. Noem did, however, shell out an estimated $2.7 million on three deployments of National Guard troops to Texas to help “secure the border.”
- Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 31 to clarify an earlier headline which mischaracterized the nature of the plane travel.
