Will this actually go somewhere? Just weeks after former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was reassigned from her post, she now faces possible legal problems. A group of Democrat senators has criminally referred Noem to the Department of Justice for allegedly committing perjury during her hearings in Congress last month. Fox News broke the story of the criminal referral: President Donald Trump ousted her from leadership of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the top Democrats on their respective chambers’ Judiciary Committees, sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday accusing Noem of lying to Congress during back-to-back hearings earlier this month. “A number of her statements appear to violate criminal statutes prohibiting perjury and knowingly making false statements to Congress,” the letter said. “After months of evading our Committees’ requests to testify in routine oversight hearings, Secretary Noem made a series of demonstrably false statements in a brazen attempt to undermine critical congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security.” The top Democrats on the Senate and House Judiciary committees charged that there were four categories of statements Noem made during her testimony before the respective panels where the DHS chief could have perjured herself. Among those answers the lawmakers scrutinized were whether DHS follows court orders, Corey Lewandowski’s role in DHS contracts, whether immigration enforcement has detained U.S. citizens, and most notably the contracting process for a $220 million ad campaign heavily featuring Noem. The ad campaign, in particular, was an explosive moment during Noem’s hearing earlier this month when Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., pressed her on whether there was a competitive bid process for the contracts and the substantial cash flow. Noem told the panel that the contract did go through a competitive process, “and career officials at the Department chose who would do those advertising commercials.” When asked if President Donald Trump knew about the ad campaign and its eye-popping sum, Noem said he did. Trump contradicted that statement in an interview with Reuters, and Kennedy argued that it was “hard to believe” the president would give it the green light. MS NOW reports: Host: Two Democratic lawmakers are asking the DOJ to launch a perjury investigation into former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. The referral stems from her testimony in front of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. pic.twitter.com/7jqFheYz6j — FactPost (@factpostnews) March 16, 2026 Noem is currently serving as the special envoy to The Shield of the Americas. The Hill reported more on what exactly The Shield of the Americas is: President Trump said Thursday that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem would leave her role and be appointed as a special envoy for “The Shield of the Americas,” bringing her tumultuous tenure atop DHS to an end. Noem faced scrutiny and intense questioning about the fatal shooting deaths of two American citizens by federal immigration authorities in Minnesota earlier this year. More recently, she was met with skepticism at a Senate hearing from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who argued that a more than $200 million ad campaign she oversaw and appeared in for DHS was primarily “effective in your name recognition.” While the soon-to-be former secretary will no longer head up immigration and other national security agencies under DHS, her work for “Shield of the Americas” will hit on similar topics, including immigrants in the country illegally, transnational trafficking and border crossings. The regional coalition of countries in Latin America will work together on ideology and policy initiatives that help secure the Western Hemisphere, according to the White House. The Shield of the Americas will be guided in part by the president’s foreign policy initiatives dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine,” fashioned after the Monroe Doctrine. The administration has described the doctrine as enlisting “established friends” in the Western Hemisphere to pursue U.S. aims and expanding ties by “cultivating and strengthening new partners.”