By Ted Hesson and Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) – U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin will leave the administration, she said in a social media post on Tuesday, a move that comes as public support for President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has dwindled.
McLaughlin was a prominent booster of the Republican president’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement and headed the press operation at DHS, which has come under scrutiny for issuing inaccurate or incomplete statements following violent encounters involving federal immigration officers.
Lauren Bis, currently a deputy in the DHS public affairs division, will take the top role in the department and conservative commentator Katie Zacharia will join as a spokesperson, McLaughlin said, confirming moves previously reported by Reuters.
Public support for Trump’s immigration enforcement push dropped to the lowest level of his presidency in January after months of clashes in U.S. cities and after federal immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Reuters/Ipsos polls show. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem initially called the victims in those shootings “domestic terrorists” rather than back an investigation, leading to criticism from Democrats and some fellow Republicans.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives last month launched an effort to impeach Noem, saying she had violated public trust, stymied congressional oversight and engaged in self-dealing.
Noem, a former governor of South Dakota, became the face of Trump’s immigration crackdown during his first year, appearing on the ground with ICE officers in New York City and posing for photographs in front of detainees in a high-security prison in El Salvador.
A Wall Street Journal report last week detailed internal tensions at DHS under Noem and top adviser Corey Lewandowski.
Noem praised McLaughlin on X, saying she demonstrated “exceptional dedication, tenacity, and professionalism” during her tenure at DHS. A department spokesperson said McLaughin’s departure had been planned since December.
Incoming department spokesperson Zacharia previously worked as a legal adviser for Fix California, a conservative group that aims to address what it described as “the left’s stranglehold” on state politics. The group was founded by Richard Grenell, who has served as Trump’s envoy to Venezuela and is the interim president and executive director of the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington.
In appearances on Fox News in recent months, Zacharia, a California native, has criticized the state’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newson and offered support for Trump’s agenda.
Zacharia, whose social media posts mix her media appearances with footage of gym workouts, wrote in a New York Post opinion article on Sunday that she refused to back down to “liberal bullies” who pressured her to remove her pro-Trump hat at her local kickboxing gym.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Jasper Ward; Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Daphne Psaledakis, Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
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