DHS Secretary Noem told her advisory council she was seeking a way to fire employees who 'don't like us' or oppose administration policy

At the first meeting of the Department of Homeland Security's reconstituted Homeland Security Advisory Council on July 2, 2025, Secretary Kristi Noem told the assembled members that she was looking to them for advice on, among other management questions, "how to fire people who don't like us." She stated that "there's people here in this department that don't support what we're doing," and added that she did not feel supported by some employees within a department that employs roughly 250,000 people.

Noem framed the request as part of a broader agenda for the council that also covered border security, immigration, FEMA disaster response, and contracting. On the personnel question specifically, she asked the advisers to help identify a lawful path to remove career civil servants who, in her characterization, did not like the department's leadership or support its policy direction.

Career federal employees are generally protected from removal on political or viewpoint grounds by civil-service law, and as of the reporting it remained unclear what legal mechanism the Secretary could use to fire employees on the basis she described. No specific mechanism had been confirmed and no employee had been removed under the stated rationale at the time of publication. The notable act recorded here is the public statement of intent by the department head to seek such a mechanism.