On a winter night time final yr, shortly after Donald Trump was sworn into workplace, senior officers on the Division of Homeland Safety assembled discreetly at a personal dwelling in Washington, D.C., to debate what they noticed as a gathering disaster contained in the company: the connection between their new boss, Kristi Noem, and Corey Lewandowski, her adviser, enforcer, and rumored boyfriend.
The officers had been beneath monumental stress. Trump had recaptured the presidency amid a well-liked backlash in opposition to unlawful immigration, and had promised a shock-and-awe program of mass deportations as soon as he returned to energy. Now DHS—conceived after 9/11 to guard the nation from terrorist assaults—was being ordered to shift its focus and assets towards delivering on the president’s marketing campaign pledge. This undertaking, already controversial and logistically fraught, was being sophisticated by Lewandowski—a menacing, omnipresent operator who had no expertise in immigration enforcement, however who was nonetheless shortly consolidating energy on the company. The officers had gathered that night time to map the methods his relationship with Noem may destabilize the division. The dialog ran six hours.
The key assembly, which has not been beforehand reported, is described in Undue Course of: The Inside Story of Trump’s Mass Deportation Programa forthcoming ebook by the NBC Information reporter Julia Ainsley. The ebook is about to return out in early Might, however The Atlantic obtained parts of it early.
The ebook, primarily based on intensive reporting, depicts the Division of Homeland Safety as a dysfunctional fiefdom in Trump’s Washington empire—tasked with finishing up probably the most aggressive immigration crackdown in U.S. historical past even because the company’s inside tradition is warped by the connection between an formidable, attention-thirsty secretary and her domineering right-hand man and alleged paramour. In Ainsley’s account, Lewandowski is concerned in practically each side of the company: who will get heard in conferences, what info reaches Noem’s desk, which contractors get employed, and even what sort of detention amenities are constructed to carry arrested migrants.
Noem and Lewandowski, each of whom are married with kids, have denied a romantic relationship. “It’s bullshit,” Lewandowski informed The Atlantic in October. A spokesperson for DHS stated, “This Division doesn’t waste time with salacious, baseless gossip.”
However their rumored affair has been extensively handled as an open secret in Washington—first whispered about in political and media circles, then chronicled in tabloids just like the Each day Mailand, extra lately, making its manner into the The Wall Road Journalwhich reported that the pair flies across the nation collectively in a luxurious 737 with a personal cabin within the again, and that the president incessantly asks in regards to the relationship. In Undue Course ofAinsley quotes unnamed officers describing the alleged affair as widespread information. “They don’t cover it,” says one Customs and Border Safety official who interacted with them usually. A member of Trump’s transition staff,Ainsley writes, put it extra crassly to her in January 2025: “Oh yeah, they’re nonetheless fucking.”
The reported affair has prompted pressure with the West Wing: When Noem tried to put in Lewandowski as her chief of workers, the White Home vetoed the transfer. Rumors about their relationship had been already circulating too extensively—and Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of workers and most influential immigration hawk, was personally repelled by their obvious infidelity, in line with Ainsley’s ebook. (Miller, Ainsley writes, is a “hard-liner in terms of monogamy in marriage,” although a fast survey of the White Home org chart surfaces not less than one exception to his purported no-adulterers rule.) When a CBP official sought Miller’s recommendation on the best way to navigate the brand new terrain at DHS, Ainsley writes, he warned, “Avoid Corey.” Reached for remark, a White Home official disputed this account, saying “Stephen has by no means had any conversations about these rumors nor expressed any ideas or emotions on them” and “Stephen has by no means informed anybody to keep away from Corey.”
As an alternative, Lewandowski was employed as a “particular authorities worker,” much like Elon Musk’s association as the pinnacle of DOGE. The designation is meant to cap authorities work at 130 days a yr, however in line with Ainsley, Lewandowski appeared to ignore the rule. Inside DHS headquarters, he started referring to himself as “chief adviser” to the secretary. (In accordance with the DHS spokesperson, Lewandowski labored 115 days final yr as a particular authorities worker.)
Lewandowski was a relative no-name in Republican politics when he was employed in 2015 to function Trump’s first marketing campaign supervisor. He developed a fame for vindictiveness and bullying; his transient tenure was marked by a number of bodily confrontations with reporters and protesters. He was additionally accused of constructing sexually suggestive feedback and undesirable romantic advances towards feminine journalists overlaying the 2016 marketing campaign. (Lewandowski denied these allegations on the time.)
However his loyalty earned him a everlasting place in Trump’s orbit, which Lewandowski has used lately to advance Noem’s political profession—introducing her to key Trump-world figures and shaping her public picture. Noem’s rise from governor of South Dakota to MAGA political movie star was additionally abetted by her personal refashioning. As Ainsley writes, Noem underwent an intensive bodily transformation to adapt to a sure MAGA aesthetic—together with dental surgical procedure and different obvious beauty enhancements—and, by 2024, she was touring with a private make-up artist. (The DHS spokesperson famous that Noem has not traveled with a make-up artist as secretary.)
She additionally has a aptitude for the theatrical. Shortly after she was put in within the Cupboard, she attended a pre-raid briefing for ICE officers in New York Metropolis. As profession officers regarded on in bewilderment, Noem walked onstage—in TV-ready make-up, coiffed curls, and a Kevlar vest—to a rustic music by Hint Adkins known as “Scorching Mama.” (“And also you’re one sizzling mama / You flip me on. Let’s flip it up, and switch this room, right into a sauna.”) The surreal spectacle helped earn Noem the nickname “ICE Barbie.”
Trump had reportedly thought-about tapping Noem to be his operating mate in 2024. However her title was crossed off the brief checklist after she disclosed in a memoir that she had shot an “untrainable” household canine years earlier. The story prompted widespread outrage and mock, and lots of observers assumed it sank her prospects of an administration put up. However Ainsley stories that Trump really noticed this explicit biographical element as an asset in his homeland-security secretary—it was one of many causes he selected her.
Whereas Noem performed to the cameras, Ainsley writes, Lewandowski was busy accumulating an “unchecked stage of energy” inside DHS. Officers had been reluctant to query him out of concern that they’d be terminated by Noem, and a chill settled over any conferences that he attended. “She would ask, ‘Why is everybody so quiet?’ when it was plain to see folks had been afraid to talk up in entrance of Corey,” one of many CPB officers informed Ainsley. “What are you going to do? Make an accusation? They’ll tear you aside,” the official stated.
One coverage that Lewandowski took a specific curiosity in, in line with Undue Course ofwas migrant-detention facilities. Contained in the administration, Ainsley writes, a divide had shaped over the best way to home the hundreds of thousands of immigrants Trump needed to arrest. One group, which included “border czar” Tom Homan, favored scaling up the development of conventional brick-and-mortar amenities. However Lewandowski was useless set on a less expensive, extra austere resolution: He envisioned shuttling detained migrants to tent cities in punishing areas. His lobbying in the end led to the creation of the infamous “Alligator Alcatraz” facility within the Florida Everglades in addition to a tent compound in Guantánamo Bay.
Lewandowski additionally took a heavy-handed strategy to distributing DHS contracts, Ainsley writes, insisting that any expenditure over $100,000 be signed off by himself and Noem. Beforehand, a secretary’s sign-off was required just for expenditures of $25 million or extra. The new coverage prompted contractors to complain to the White Home.
However even these inside the administration who objected to his administration of the division had been reluctant to problem him and not using a “smoking gun,” Ainsley stories. As one White Home official put it, Lewandowski was like a cockroach who’d grown resistant to insecticide—eliminating him was simpler stated than completed.
By Ainsley, Julia
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