Coast Guard Brass Secretly Fume at ICE Barbie Over Jaw-Dropping Order

[Eugene]

Source: The Daily Beast

Coast Guard Brass Secretly Fume at ICE Barbie Over Jaw-Dropping Order

Leigh Kimmins
Tue, February 17, 2026 at 7:22 AM EST
2 min read

Kristi ‘ICE Barbie’ Noem rankled senior Coast Guard officials by urging the force to divert resources from an active search-and-rescue mission to one designed to deport migrants, according to insiders.

The Coast Guard was trying to find a missing service member, Seaman Bryan K. Lee, 23, from California, who “was reported unaccounted for” on Tuesday morning, Feb. 4 last year, just nine days after Noem was confirmed as Homeland Security secretary.

The force had been using a C-130 military transport aircraft in the search. The same plane was supposed to be enforcing President Trump’s scorched-earth anti-immigration campaign by ferrying detained migrants from California to Texas.

So, Noem verbally ordered it be pulled from the Pacific search, two U.S. officials and a Coast Guard official told NBC News. They said she commanded the Acting Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Kevin Lunday, to redirect the aircraft so that it could fulfill its “Alien Expulsion Operations.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/coast-guard-brass-secretly-fume-122229015.html

[jls4561]

1. I posted this earlier, but it bears repeating - seaman Lee was not found.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/10/coast-guard-calls-off-search-service-member-missing-eastern-pacific.html

I do not know if the C-130 would have made a difference to the search, it I do know what recalling the plane says about Noem’s priorities.