Kristi Noem pulls plane off search for overboard Coast Guardsman to deport migrants

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem got off to an immediately rocky start with the U.S. Coast Guard, according to new in-depth reporting.

President Donald Trump's pick to lead DHS angered senior Coast Guard officials by prioritizing deportation flights over search-and-rescue operations, and the tensions began just days into her tenure, on Feb. 4, 2025, when a 23-year-old guardsman went overboard into the Pacific Ocean from the cutter Waesche, four current and former officials told NBC News.

"The Coast Guard had surged ships and aircraft to the Pacific to find the Coast Guardsman," NBC reported. "Hours into the search, Noem learned that a Coast Guard C-130 that was supposed to fly detained migrants from California to Texas was among the aircraft over the Pacific looking for the missing Coast Guardsman, and she intervened, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official."

"Noem verbally instructed the Acting Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Kevin Lunday, to pull the plane off the search-and-rescue mission so it would not miss the migrant flight as part of the DHS’s so-called Alien Expulsion Operations, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official," the report added.

The admiral notified National Command Center, which ordered the C-130 to fly to San Diego while other aircraft and ships continued searching, but the regional Coast Guard command in San Diego scrambled to find two available C-27s to fly the migrants to Texas, which allowed the C-130 to rejoin the search after about an hour.

"The search ultimately went on for 190 hours covering 19,000 square miles, but the Coast Guardsman was never found," NBC reported. "It’s not clear that Noem’s directive to pull the C-130 had any impact on the search, particularly given the Coast Guard found alternative aircraft that allowed it to return to the effort."

A DHS spokesperson insisted “the C-130 never left the search” and claimed there's no proof it was diverted away from those efforts, but two U.S. officials, a Coast Guard official and a former Coast Guard official told NBC News that the incident showed the culture clash between the agency and the only military branch Noem oversees.

“The primary mission was search-and-rescue,” the former Coast Guard official said, "and now the number one stated mission of the Coast Guard is border security, that is a cultural change that the culture hasn’t quite caught up to.”

That official complained that "you never know what’s going to happen" with Noem at the helm, and that source added that morale at Coast Guard headquarters “is terrible.”