President-elect Donald Trump has selected South Dakota governor Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary for his second term in office.

“She will work closely with ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan to secure the Border, and will guarantee that our American Homeland is secure from our adversaries,” Trump said in a statement on Tuesday.

Trump went through six DHS secretaries during his first term, highlighting the turnover that marked his previous stint in the White House.

“Kristi has been very strong on Border Security,” he said. “She was the first Governor to send National Guard Soldiers to help Texas fight the Biden Border Crisis, and they were sent a total of eight times.”

“With Donald Trump, we will secure the Border, and restore safety to American communities so that families will again have the opportunity to pursue The American Dream,” Noem responded in a statement.

Noem will oversee an agency tasked with a wide range of responsibilities. The Department of Homeland Security oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, and others. Its $60 billion budget and more than 230,000 employees make Noem a particularly noteworthy selection.

Immigration has served as a focal point of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric since 2016, and he took steps to secure the southern border once in power. Noem will undoubtedly play an outsized role in the next administration’s management of immigration flows and security.

“Biden’s open border policies are facilitating illegal border crossings,” Noem wrote earlier this year. “This invasion must end. The federal government has to stop violating federal law. . . . And we need to go back to President Trump’s successful immigration policies immediately.”

In 2023, Noem deployed South Dakota National Guard troops to Texas to help Governor Greg Abbott gain control of border areas.

Noem joins a slate of other prominent Trump appointees that have been announced over the past week.