One of the Trump administration’s most outspoken defenders of its tough immigration agenda is heading for the exit, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the move.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, is expected to notify colleagues Tuesday that she plans to step down. She is leaving DHS next week, the officials said.
McLaughlin did not immediately respond to Politico’s request for comment.
During some of the administration’s most contentious enforcement operations, including actions in Chicago and Minneapolis, McLaughlin emerged as a visible and combative surrogate, regularly pushing back against critics online and on cable news.
Her departure comes at a delicate moment for DHS, which is navigating a funding lapse while Republicans and Democrats haggle over potential changes to ICE and Customs and Border Protection. The department did not immediately comment on who will assume communications duties.
McLaughlin, a former communications aide to Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential campaign and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, had been preparing to leave since December but postponed the move following the Renee Good and Alex Pretti shootings, according to people briefed on her exit who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Behind the scenes, tensions have simmered. Some Trump administration officials have privately questioned Noem’s leadership as DHS grappled with negative headlines, including criticism that the department moved too quickly in its public characterizations of the two fatal shootings. President Trump tapped border czar Tom Homan to oversee operations in Minneapolis, a decision viewed by some White House aides as a counterweight to Noem.
After Noem, McLaughlin was widely seen as one of the strategy’s most effective advocates. At the height of her tenure, the former ABC News contributor sometimes logged up to five television appearances a day. She gave interviews across the media spectrum, including Fox News, CNN, CBS News, NPR, and Newsmax, and appeared on multiple podcasts.
“Media is so much of the battle, so to speak, on the immigration issue,” McLaughlin told the Cincinnati Enquirer last month. “So much of the debate is a [public relations] debate. It’s a PR war.”
That war, colleagues say, has taken a toll.
It remains unclear what McLaughlin will do next. Asked by the Enquirer whether she might run for office if she returned to Cincinnati, McLaughlin, who is married to GOP consultant Ben Yoho, said she “wouldn’t rule anything out.”
While immigration dominated headlines, McLaughlin also handled messaging on a broad array of DHS issues, from TSA disruptions during last year’s government shutdown to the Coast Guard’s Caribbean drug interdictions and FEMA’s storm responses.
Her tenure at DHS followed earlier roles in the first Trump administration, where she served under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and later worked at the State Department on arms control matters.
