DHS confirms that Lewandowski left the department along with Noem

Corey Lewandowski, the Trump 2016 campaign manager who served as an unpaid adviser to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for the past year, is no longer working at DHS, the department said Friday.

A statement confirmed his departure from DHS but did not specify any future government role for Lewandowski, who was photographed with Noem this week in Guyana during an official visit she made to the South American country.

“Mr. Lewandowski no longer has a role at DHS,” the statement said.

The confirmation of his status at DHS comes amid speculation about his future after Noem was named a special envoy for Western Hemisphere security issues. Lewandowski appeared with her in photos released by the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.

Controversy swirled around Lewandowski’s role at DHS during Noem’s stormy tenure leading the department at the forefront of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operations.

Lewandowski started working as political adviser to Noem while she was South Dakota governor and lobbied President Donald Trump to name her DHS chief. He played an outsize role at the department once she joined the Cabinet.

Lewandowski came into the Trump administration as a “special government employee,” raising questions about how he was counting his days at the agency. U.S. law limits temporary government employees to 130 days per year of unpaid work, but Lewandowski has worked at DHS since the start of Noem’s tenure in February 2025.

He did not respond to an earlier request for comment about whether he’d be staying in government. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Lewandowski’s employment status Friday.

Despite his informal status, Lewandowski had the ability to veto any contract exceeding $100,000 at the agency, as well as other high-level decisions. An administration official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, also told POLITICO that Lewandowski was already facing heat over DHS's short-lived move last month to shut down TSA PreCheck. The move was seen as a way to pressure Democrats to fund the department, which has been shut down since February of this year over a funding impasse.

Noem earlier this month refused to answer questions from House Democrats about her relationship with Lewandowski amid media reports that the two have had an affair.

Lewandowski, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, was widely credited with the tactical decisions that led to the president's win in the New Hampshire primary that year. His star faded after he was accused of grabbing a female reporter by the arm at a campaign event. He was removed from his post during an internal power struggle with then-campaign chair Paul Manafort. The Trump ally denied any wrongdoing for the incident.

Despite Lewandowski’s rocky efforts in 2016, Trump and Lewandowski have remained close. Trump briefly named Lewandowski as a senior adviser to the 2024 presidential campaign, though he was moved into a surrogate role by October in the face of displeasure from Trump.