Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem donned a cowboy hat and boots and   a trusty steed last weekend for her first tour of the southern border since her confirmation.  Expected.

     Noem joined Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas, the same area made infamous several years back when now-unemployed ex-VP Kamala Harris falsely accused agents of whipping Haitian migrants as a crowd of nearly 14,000 crossed into the US illegally.   “The men and women of Border Patrol are ENERGIZED and HAPPY again because they get to do their job. They are able to fulfill their mission to keep America safe,” Noem wrote in an X post.

     She also lambasted her predecessor Alejandro Mayorkas, whom she said “rode over the Border Patrol and didn’t let them do their jobs” in an earlier post sharing video of her leading a group of around a dozen border agents on horseback along the dusty route.  Del Rio had been a hotbed of illegal crossing activity under the Biden administration, regularly seeing 4,000 crossings or more per day in December 2023, when the crisis peaked.

     But that number started falling almost immediately upon President Trump taking office Jan. 20, with just 60 crossings recorded several weeks ago. Harris embarrassed herself and made national headlines in 2021 after she reacted to a handful of photos of agents on horseback in Del Rio and falsely accused the agents of being racist.  “Human beings should not be treated that way,” Harris told the brain trust on “The View” just days after the controversy. “It also invoked images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, it has been used against African Americans during times of slavery.”