Kristi Noem found herself at the center of a growing online backlash this week after a viral confrontation raised uncomfortable questions about who the Department of Homeland Security is putting into federal uniforms.
As criticism mounted, what once felt like speculation about ICE’s hiring standards began to look more like a pattern critics say is being ignored in the rush to expand the agency’s ranks.
Video taken in Minneapolis of what some believed to be an off-duty ICE agent just two days before the fatal shooting of an unarmed Minnesota mother of three by an ICE agent on Wednesday, Jan 7, shows what appears to be a Nazi tattoo on his head.
An account named after A-list action hero actor Liam Neeson reposted a shot of an ice agent with the Nazi SS double lightning bolt symbol tattooed behind his ear in a post that has now gone viral with 3.5 million views.
The original video of the agent, with over 130,000 likes, was posted by Kaos.follows on Instagram just hours before the deadly shooting. In the clip, a man filming the scene approaches the unmasked agent who is getting out of his truck and asks him why he has the Nazi tattoo.
“Dude, it’s old now,” the agent responds.
“Yeah, get the f-ck in your truck and get the f-ck out of this city, dog,” the photographer tells him.
“Dude I’m not even from nowhere around. We just come through,” the agent said as he tried to walk away.
“Your whole crew Nazis?” the camera guys asks.
“No, man, we’re not even from here.”
“Where are the rest of them at?”
“Texas.”
“Ga back to Texas,” the camera guy warns.
“Dude, I had this done years ago,” the agent insisted.
“I know and it’s still on your f-cking face, bro.”
“Because I ain’t had no time to change it,” the agent whined.
“I seen that before. I seen your f-cking eyes, dog. Get the f-ck out of my city or I will f-cking end you,” the camera guy shouts as the agent walks away down the sidewalk.
There’s been increasing concern about the background and ideological beliefs of federal agents hired by the Trump administration and Noem, especially after the deadly shooting in Minneapolis that left victim Renee Good dead.
“Hey Kristie Noem, quick question, why does ICE hire tubby losers with visible Nazi tattoos?” X user Liam Nissan asked in the post.
“She has no choice That’s the only type of people that apply,” this X user responded.
“Maybe that’s the requirement you should have for that job,” another X poster wondered.
And still another noted, “If this is real, it’s a failure of oversight — not a ‘bad apple.’”
Others poked at the man’s demeanor after being called out.
“HAHAHAHA HES SO SCARED,” said one viewer on X. “Dude that’s a waddle not a walk!” another mocked.
Another added on Threads, “Catch them by themselves, they don’t act so big and tuff more like a scary little puzzy!”
“Make them scared and keep them scared,” said another on the original Instagram post shared on Monday.
This isn’t the first time federal agents’ tattoos have raised concerns. Last summer during an immigration crackdown on Martha’s Vineyard an agent was spotted with a triple interconnecting triangle tattoo, a symbol used by white supremacists, although the valknot is also an “old Norse symbol that often represented the afterlife in carvings and designs,” according to the Martha’s Vineyard Times.
The newspaper reached out to ICE and a spokesperson said members of the military used the triangles tattoo as a “tribute to fallen warriors,” but also admitted racist groups used the symbol as well.
A statement at the time said “ICE said has no tolerance for racism,” but nowhere on the agency’s “Careers” website does it prohibit racist, bigoted, white supremacist or Nazi beliefs or tattoos.
That context has taken on new urgency as the Department of Homeland Security races to dramatically expand ICE staffing under Noem’s leadership. According to reporting from multiple outlets and internal DHS sources, the agency has been under pressure to add thousands of new agents on an accelerated timeline, leading to relaxed screening standards, truncated training programs, and recruits being pushed through before full vetting is complete — all in service of meeting raw headcount goals.
Critics say that environment all but guarantees questionable actors slip through.
An email from ICE headquarters to the agency’s top officials on October 5 lamented that “a considerable amount of athletically allergic candidates” who reported for training had “misrepresented” their physical condition on application forms.
“We even had a 469-pound man sent to the academy whose own doctor certified him not at all fit for any activity,” a DHS official told the Daily Mail, which published an investigation into ICE’s lax vetting and declining training.
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