Since January 20, she has been the face of the anti-immigrant raids in the United States. Kristi Noem, Donald Trump's secretary of homeland security, has owned every aspect of it: The rounding up of farmworkers in California's fields, the detentions in Florida's unsanitary swamps, the American citizens caught in the dragnet of immigration officers, the children left alone after their parents were arrested at a traffic light.

Not only has she owned it, but she has diligently lent her image to the operations. On March 26, she posed in front of El Salvador's high-security prison. In the background, dozens of inmates with shaved heads and bare chests, wearing white shorts, crowded together behind bars like cattle. Noem had come to show that Trump's America deports only dangerous "criminals," regardless of the views held by judges who maintain that anyone arrested has the right to challenge their detention.

Noem relishes being in the spotlight. She "has found a penchant for her own brand of Trump reality TV, in which she gets to dress up as different characters for the camera," said Democratic lawmaker Adam Schiff on his YouTube channel, compiling clips of her performances. Noem can be seen on horseback, patrolling with border police. Wearing a leather co-pilot's jacket in a Coast Guard plane. During the staged event in front of the Salvadoran prison, she forgot to remove the $50,000 Rolex from her wrist.

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