NovaRed, the Canadian company that just put Noem on its advisory board, had better not take Noem’s advice on personnel matters. A federal grand jury just added one more man to the list of convicts who got commutations from Kristi Noem and then got charged with new felonies:
A Sioux Falls man on parole has been charged with federal crimes related to the death of his 14-year-old niece amid ongoing debates about parole reform that have led to stricter supervision standards in South Dakota.
A grand jury in the Northern District of Iowa indicted 51-year-old Mark Milk on Wednesday with five felony counts tied to allegations that he provided the cocaine that killed McKenna Wendel on March 14, gave her THC, took her across state lines to engage in illegal sexual activity and acted to conceal evidence.
…Milk was sentenced to life in prison in 1994 for beating a man to death after a fight in Winner. Then-Gov. Kristi Noem commuted his sentence in 2023, making him eligible for parole. The commutation came after Milk went through a formal application process and earned a unanimous recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. The board released him the following year after a parole hearing. Wendel was at the hearing and asked the board to support his release.
Milk is in custody at the Minnehaha County Jail in Sioux Falls, and has been since March 17, when he was arrested for allegedly driving drunk and fleeing police [John Hult, “Sioux Falls Man on Parole for Manslaughter Is Charged with Providing Drugs That Killed His Niece,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.06.18].
NovaRed should also be wary of Noem’s advice on property acquisition, since during barely a year running the Department of Homeland Security, Noem blew $700 million on warehouses that DHS now says it doesn’t need:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to give away or sell seven empty warehouses it bought for $700 million to detain migrants as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown, according to a report.
Under ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the immigration agency purchased 11 facilities, so far totaling $1 billion. But now that her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, wants his department to go about immigration enforcement in a “more quiet way,” the agency is getting rid of seven of the sprawling facilities, The New York Times reports.
…The facilities—which the administration wanted to use for processing more detainees— were acquired in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas, according to public records and local reports. Now ICE is planning to offload the warehouses in Michigan and New Jersey, according to The Times, and could give them away to other federal agencies.
…Claire Trickler-McNulty, a senior ICE official in the Biden administration, told The Times that the plan “seemed questionable from inception.”
“Clearly the warehouses have caused some serious headaches, with pauses due to state litigation, an I.G. investigation and no opening date in sight with close to a billion dollars spent,” Trickler-McNulty said [Rhian Lubin, “ICE Planning to Give Away—or Sell—7 Migrant Centers It Bought for $700M: Report,” The Independent, 2026.06.18].
Noem’s expensive “Alligator Alcatraz” concentration camp now sits empty and unwanted in Florida, and Secretary Mullin has been undoing other bad personnel and contact decisions Noem made at DHS:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is canceling most pending contracts initiated under ousted Secretary Kristi Noem, the current secretary said on Wednesday, a move that follows congressional scrutiny and an internal watchdog review of her contracting practices.
During a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, Secretary Markwayne Mullin also said he would restore longer training for federal immigration officers, reversing a Noem-era decision that shortened training during a hiring surge and drew bipartisan concerns in Congress about whether recruits were adequately prepared [Ted Hesson and David Shepardson, “US Homeland Security Cancels Most Pending Noem-Era Contracts After Review,” Reuters, 2026.06.03].
Convicts she thought had come clean going back to jail, contracts and training policies she pushed at her last job getting reversed by her successor… good grief! NovaRed or anyone else that offers her a job clearly isn’t reading her résumé… or the résumé of other candidates who might add actual value to their operations.