DHS Secretary Kristi Noem fabricated story of migrant who ate himself on ICE deportation flight

On July 1, 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, standing alongside President Trump during a tour of the "Alligator Alcatraz" migrant detention facility in Ochopee, Florida, told reporters that federal marshals had "detained a cannibal and put him on a plane to take him home, and while they had him in his seat, he started to eat himself and they had to get him off and get him medical attention." She repeated the story on Fox News with Jesse Watters, telling him the man "called himself a cannibal and ate other people and ate himself that day," and told it again a month later at a press conference alongside Trump.

On February 23, 2026, The Intercept reported that three federal law enforcement officials, including one from Noem's own Department of Homeland Security, said the story never happened. "That is completely false," one senior official said, adding that the claim was "completely made up" and "never took place." A second official said staff checked with ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division and "there was no information about it." Asked directly whether the story originated with Noem or the marshals she credited, one official said unequivocally: "Noem." Reporters had sought comment from DHS, ICE, and the U.S. Marshals Service for months; when a DHS spokesperson finally responded, the agency did not deny the story was false, instead saying Noem was merely relaying what an air marshal had told her -- an account the same officials said the marshals never gave.

Noem has a documented pattern of untested, uncorrected claims used to justify her department's enforcement posture; this is the first instance confirmed on the record by DHS's own personnel as invented outright, rather than exaggerated or contested.