When aspiring Instagram model and part-time DHS secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported a shiny gold watch on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000. (By the way, preening for a photo op -- notice the French shirt tuck --with those prisoners qualifies as an actual war crime.) Via The Washington Post:
The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.
“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.
Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.
“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.
“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there's “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”
That many people bought her crappy book? Wow.
It appears that Kristi Noem may have worn a $60K Rolex during her visit to the El Salvadoran prison camp today. pic.twitter.com/5QWfqzrtzN
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) March 27, 2025
