‘ICE Barbie’ Kristi Noem’s dog-killing scandal backlash refuses to die. The Secretary of Homeland Security recently shared a clip of her family farm in Hazel, South Dakota, on her Instagram handle. However, she got trolled for the post.
Ironically, the ICE Barbie has limited the comments section on her social media profile. The limited comments notwithstanding, Instagram users managed to troll Kristi Noem anyway. A section of the Internet reminded Kristi of her infamous dog-killing scandal.
Sharing the clip of the ranch, the ICE Barbie captioned the Instagram video, “You can literally hear ‘fall”! (Sound on!) Early morning chores this weekend gave me a chance to enjoy this beautiful moment of leaves dropping off the trees.”
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A brief memory refresher, in case one is needed, Kristi Noem, in her 2024 memoir No Going Back, had revealed that she had shot her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, on her family ranch. The Internet never forgets, and they decided to comment on the same on her new Instagram entry. “You kept an innocent animal alive. Shocking, based on your track record,” an Instagram user wrote despite the comments section being limited.
Another one added, “Is she going to blow their heads off?” Many comments related to Kristi Noem’s pet dog, Cricket, flooded the comments section. “The quiet of another day was only broken by you shooting your pet dog in the face,” a user wrote, reminding the ICE Barbie of the incident.
Krist Noem is popularly known as ICE Barbie. An Instagram user took a swipe at her, tweaked the popular moniker and wrote, “Try not to shoot any of your pets, fascist Barbie.” Another remark from an Instagram user read, “Poor Cricket. The little pup didn’t deserve to be murdered. A stable person would have re-homed him.” Similar thoughts echoed in the comments section. “Just heard the ghost of the dog you killed,” read one of the remarks dropped on Kristi Noem’s post.
Kristi Noem’s dog-killing admission in 2024 drew immense backlash from social media users and critics alike. There were even speculations that Vice President and fellow Republican JD Vance slammed her cryptically for the incident.
JD Vance made a statement earlier this week about liberal influencer Hasar Piker. However, it also appeared to be an indirect dig at Kristi Noem. “I think it tells you that they’re bad people. If you can actually cause suffering to an innocent animal, you’re probably the kind of person who doesn’t worry about suffering in people,” JD Vance said.
JD Vance didn’t just talk about the mistreatment of animals; he singled out dogs, adding, “That’s been my experience, if you mistreat dogs, that’s a 100% sign that you’re gonna be a really terrible person. Well, how did Freddy Krueger get his start? One of the things they show is young Freddy Krueger torturing animals. If you’re not taking care of God’s creatures, then you’re certainly going to be, I think, a pretty bad person.”
Referring to Hasan Piker as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, JD Vance said: “If you can cause suffering to an innocent animal, you probably don’t worry about the suffering of people”
This comes as DHS Sec. Noem, who killed a puppy, cannot account for 3000 ICE detainees in Chicago. https://t.co/cVuVxLhMNy pic.twitter.com/uBt8ikQkW2
— Froggy Tonic (@froggytonic) October 29, 2025
Ironically, in her memoir, not once did the ICE Barbie apologize for her actions of killing her pet dog. Instead, she described the horrific incident as a difficult, messy, and ugly” situation and that she was able to deal with it.
The backlash continued for months. So much so that Kristi Noem has still limited the comments feature on her Instagram handle, which only allows a selected list of users to engage with her post online. Kristi Noem’s dog-killing incident also led to her getting trolled on South Park’s episode titled Got A Nut. The episode showcased Kristi admitting that she killed her dog for being “untrainable.”
Kristi Noem does things that are hard. pic.twitter.com/K425Tkc5wN
— South Park (@SouthPark) August 14, 2025
The ICE Barbie drew even more flak for her response to the makers. “It never ends, but it’s so lazy to make fun of women and how they look. Only the liberals and the extremists do that. If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that. But they can’t. They pick something petty like that,” Kristi Noem said in her defense.
