CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as his next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, according to two people familiar with the selection.

Noem will be asked to take over the agency as two key immigration hardliners — Stephen Miller and Tom Homan — move into senior office, signaling that Trump is taking his pledge to crack down on immigration promises seriously. By choosing Noem, Trump is ensuring that a loyalist will lead an agency that he prioritizes and that is crucial to his domestic agenda.

The department saw a tremendous amount of unrest the last time Trump was in office. At the time, DHS had five different leaders, only two of whom were confirmed by the Senate. The agency has a $60 billion budget and hundreds of thousands of employees.

Noem, who previously served as South Dakota’s representative, will now be tasked with overseeing a sprawling agency that oversees everything from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Secret Service employ.

Noem was once on Trump’s shortlist for vice president, although her relationship with Trump changed after the negative rollout surrounding the release of her book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In it, she revealed that she once killed her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, Cricket, when she was not showing the signs of an ideal hunting dog.

The governor wrote that the dog was “untrainable,” according to excerpts first reported by The Guardian. Noem later argued that those anecdotes were meant to show how capable she is of doing some of life’s more gruesome jobs when necessary.