Kristi Noem defends El Salvador mega-prison photo op as something people need to see: Consequence of someone who is a terrorist

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem acknowledged Monday that she was trying to send a message to migrant gang members and the American people when she was filmed and photographed inside El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison last week. “People need to see that image,” Noem said of the striking pictures of her surrounded by rows of tattooed inmates standing obediently inside their crammed cells at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. “They need to see that the United States is going to use every tool that we have to make our communities safer, that that is a consequence of someone who is a terrorist,” the DHS secretary added in an interview with Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier Monday night.Noem said the tour was intended to provide “transparency” about how the Trump administration is dealing with alleged members of Tren de Aragua (TdA) and MS-13 detained in the US. President Trump has declared both gangs to be Foreign Terrorist Organizations.“The only people allowed in that prison are terrorists,” she explained.“And to tour that and to look at that, was giving the American people the transparency that they want out of their government.”“They were able to see exactly where we sending these people who have murdered and raped Americans, that have decimated communities, and there’s going to be consequences for individuals who continue to do that.” In stark contrast to the shirtless inmates in basic white pants or shorts, Noem wore a gold Rolex watch to the bleak facility. The timepiece, identified as a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona in a viral post on X, retails for nearly $60,000. The former Republican governor of South Dakota said that during her visit to the Central American country, she asked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele if he would be willing to “take more of these terrorists?”“And he said, ‘Absolutely, we will.

We will take the worst of the worst and make sure that they’re facing conseq...