JB Pritzker Warns Illinois to Hide Their Pets as Kristi Noem Comes to Town

As Noem visited Illinois to push a vile anti-immigrant agenda, Pritzker told “all pet owners in the region to make sure all of your beloved animals are under watchful protection.”

By Kylie Cheung | May 8, 2025 | 12:12pm

Photos: Getty Images Latest Politics

JB Pritzker Warns Illinois to Hide Their Pets as Kristi Noem Comes to Town

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) continues to be among the most vocal Trump administration critics in the Democratic Party, this time wielding comedy as his weapon of choice. On Wednesday, amid Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s publicity stunt of a visit to the state to baselessly claim that “governors like JB Pritzker don’t care if gangbangers, murderers, rapists and pedophiles roam free,” Pritzker turned the tables, pointing out that Noem herself poses far more of a public safety threat than immigrants.

In a statement, Pritzker warned “all pet owners in the region to make sure all of your beloved animals are under watchful protection.” In 2024, Noem’s memoir, which came as the then-South Dakota governor was clearly ambling to get on Trump’s presidential ticket and seemingly tanked her chances, Noem claimed she had no choice but to kill her puppy, Cricket, because of Cricket’s “aggressive personality” and lacking hunting skills. Noem wrote, “I hated that dog,” and described Cricket as “untrainable,” “worthless as a hunting dog,” and “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.” She concluded, “I had to put her down,” describing in unfortunate detail how she then took Cricket to a gravel pit and… shot her. Apparently, at no point in the editing process did anyone raise to Noem how psychotic she sounded to the average American reader.

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During Noem’s visit to Illinois, she railed against the state’s sanctuary status, which limits the extent to which state and local authorities have to cooperate with ICE. Noem baselessly claimed that “people are dying every day” because of policies like Illinois’ TRUST Act, the Way Forward Act, the Welcoming City Act, and a Cook County ordinance protecting undocumented immigrants. “People are evading justice,” she said, claiming Pritzker is “violating the Constitution” by not rounding up Illinois’ immigrant communities into ICE vans.

“Trump-Noem publicity stunts do not make our communities safer or our immigration system smarter. Illinois doesn’t need to abuse power or ignore the Constitution to keep our people safe,” Pritzker said in a statement to The Hill about Noem’s visit. “Like the millions of Americans asking for sensible, humane immigration reform, I encourage the Secretary to spend less time performing for Fox News and more time protecting the Homeland.”

Last month, Pritzker also took a hard-line stance against Trump and Noem’s horrific immigration policies—in particular, the administration’s operation of sending over 200 immigrant men to serve life sentences in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without any legal proceedings. Pritzker announced a boycott of Illinois investments in El Salvador in retaliation for the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, working closely with the Trump administration to imprison the unjustly deported American residents.

Noem herself had quite the month in April, from being exposed using significant Department of Homeland Security resources to doll herself up for photoshoots, to losing a purse with her passport and about $3,000 in cash… all after trying to smear immigrant men who carry around large sums of cash as innately criminal.

And, despite Noem’s claims that Pritzker isn’t cooperating with orders from the Trump administration, Pritzker accused the administration of not communicating with him at all on anything, let alone immigration: “Despite the Trump Administration being in office for more than 100 days and falsely accusing Illinois of not following federal and state law, Secretary Noem and her team does not communicate with the State of Illinois and has not asked for support or coordination to enforce immigration laws,” he said on Wednesday.

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