Just tell the truth!': Kristi Noem clashes with CNN anchor over left-wing extremism

And our law enforcement officers make sure that they're able to do their work and uphold the law in a manner that allows them to go home safely to their families at night. Yeah. Obviously concerns for their safety, for the safety of the detainees who were there, given the three people who were shot today were detainees. The acting ICE director said that the people who were in custody were not the intended targets of this shooting. I think some people might ask, well, given it was detainees who were shot today, what that information is based on tonight. Well, we'll wait for the FBI to do their work, but we do know that the way that this building was covered in bullet holes, which was discovered after the shooting happened and after the immediate consequences that we saw when everybody started to do investigative work, we saw that literally the building was showered with bullets. And when we saw the ammunition and how it was marked as well, I think that is helping investigators to find out what a motive might be. But we don't believe from the pattern that we've seen that there was a specific individual that the shooter was looking for. Okay. And the vehicle that was being investigated earlier that I mentioned with that sign on it, do you know if that did belong to the shooter here? Yeah, I can confirm that. I believe that they're investigating all vehicles that would be left around the facility. So I don't have any information that would say they believe that that belongs to the shooter. I think that they're truly examining any vehicle that is left parked. They're recognizing that the shooter no longer is alive and that he may have left a vehicle behind. And so they're looking at every single one that may be sitting there and has been there over the last 24 hours. And we heard earlier that this, this shooter, this 29 year old man was on the radar of law enforcement beforehand. Do you know why he was on their, their radar? What had he done or what he was known for? I can't speak to that in the case at this time, but I do know that those details will be released when it's appropriate. Has anything else been revealed to you in terms of, you know, the footage they've been able to see in terms of him getting access to the rooftop or anything in terms of how he got there and when? Nothing's been released to the public yet, although I do know that we'll be conducting those types of informational press conferences, interviews, letting people know as, as the case can be revealed. We want to make sure that we don't compromise it, but that we also focus on what we can do to prevent this from happening across the country. We are strengthening all of our security at all of our federal facilities and our detention and processing centers. We also are continuing to hire more and more law enforcement officers and then make sure that we're educating the public to go out there and to, if you see something, say something, let people know that if you think there is an individual who may be wishing to do harm to someone in this country, let somebody know, but also make sure that we're engaging with our friends and our family. This is a time for all of us to learn and to also spend time together and to make sure that we're having conversations rather than seeing warning signs and not acting on them before a tragic event like this warning happens again. Yeah. Secretary Noem, I noticed you're being very cautious in terms of what you're saying and noting that you're waiting for these investigations to play out. I think anyone can appreciate that and why. We did hear from the vice president today say it was a violent left-wing extremist who wrote this message on these bullets, the anti-ICE message. The president said the continuing violence from radical left terrorists in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination must be stopped. Were either of those assessments by the vice president or the president based on information that the Department of Homeland Security provided to them? Well, we've seen a lot of patterns across this country over the last several weeks and months, and we have been focused on making sure that our ICE officers have the ability to operate safely. In fact, they've seen a thousand percent increase in violent attacks against them from city to city and across this country. And so we know that we have an opportunity here to make sure that we not only can support them, but also to have their backs when they're out there in many of these cities and individuals and politicians, senators, governors are demonizing them, that we have the opportunity to tell the truth about the work that they do, that what these law enforcement officers doing, they're upholding the law. They're out there literally enforcing just the laws of this country and doing it in a fair and balanced way that doesn't make sure that they're picking one person over another. They're treating everybody appropriately and making sure that the United States and our streets are cleaned up again and that we are making this country safe. I think the question is, do we know if those assessments, as they were putting it, talking about this suspect here, if that was based on evidence or intelligence from DHS? The indication and the evidence that has been revealed to the public so far indicates that it is someone who is very much against our ICE officers and the work that they were doing and opposed to what they're doing, just opening up fire on an ice processing facility where they knew that law enforcement officers would be and individuals would be, you know, gives us some indication as to how this individual felt about his beliefs, what he believed should be happening. And we will continue to dig into his background and to see what may have motivated him and learn from him and see what we can do to prevent it in the future. Okay. But so the evidence so far, though, you know, we've seen the bullet casing that the FBI director put out to get today, obviously, the fact that this was an ICE facility. Has anything else been provided to the president or the vice president for what they said today for their statements? I can't speak to what the president and vice president were briefed on, but people don't write anti-ICE on ammunition and then fire into a building that support the work that our law enforcement are doing. They just don't do that. That's not something that would indicate that they believe that what we're doing in this country is making our streets safer and cleaning up criminal activity. So that evidence has been very clear. And the president and vice president certainly understand the challenges that we have in this country with people who support criminal and terrorist activity. Yeah. And obviously, you know, I've heard from the act or the deputy ICE director earlier saying the investigation is very much still ongoing. Obviously, we can all see those bullet casings for ourselves. Can I ask you, because you mentioned the comments that have been made about ICE agents throughout the country. This has been something that we've seen a lot of focus from the administration on today and what's been said about ICE agents. One thing that we've heard out of the West Wing recently was from a senior advisor to the president, Stephen Miller, calling Democrats a Democrat, a domestic extremist organization. As the head of the Department of Homeland Security or the Homeland Security secretary, would you agree with that characterization? No, we certainly have seen Democrats out there take extreme positions and and support radical criminal organizations. Their support of terrorists like such as MS-13 and Trende Aragua and seeing U.S. senators to go and have margaritas with them in a foreign country to support them and their child trafficking and human trafficking exploits, I think is is a tragic thing to experience in the United States. Well, Chris Van Hollen said that that was basically a setup by Bukele. But I just think the question is, would you label them a domestic extremist organization as Stephen Miller did? I would love to see these Democrats denounce these criminals, these individuals that are out there trafficking drugs and trafficking our children, raping our girls and boys and selling them and people that are out there committing criminal acts, robbing and murdering individuals. I haven't seen these Democrats do that. And they should. Gavin Newsom said should. Tim Wall should. They should denounce these activities. Crockett, we should have all of them stand up and say enough is enough. American citizens deserve safety and we're not going to stand behind any criminals and support them over our law enforcement officers. But as the DHS secretary, would you say that Democrats are a domestic extremist organization? Yes or no. These are extreme and they don't align with the American people at all. And I wish that our media and I wish reporters like you, Caitlin, would talk about the victims every day that we interact with, that we send you the stories on that you refuse to tell about the poor little girl and baby that was strangled yesterday by an illegal criminal and died. That baby died overnight. That was the first news I got this morning when I got up at 4 a.m. Then the next news that I got was that the media had reported that a father had his child taken away from him when in all reality, this poor little autistic girl was abandoned by her father. But CNN didn't report that. Right. Secretary Noem. But you know what, Caitlin, just if you guys would just tell the truth about what these criminals are and what they've done in their history, we tell the truth and make it a victim. That'd be fantastic. We send out about five or six different press releases every day, correcting stories. And I'll send you the copies of the ones that you've gotten wrong, that we've been able to correct. But but these law enforcement officers are being demonized and they should be supported because they have families, too, and they live in these communities. Their kids go to school there. Their spouses go to work and of course, night in there to make their community and their city safer. Secretary Noem, as you know, if we get something wrong, we correct it. But also what you just referenced there is not something that CNN reported. And obviously we strive.