Hello, Clarice?
More than a year after President Donald Trump started making regular mentions of ‘the late, great Hannibal Lecter,’ the fictional Baltimore psychiatrist turned serial killer, on the campaign trail, it appears the federal government has finally rid the country of a real-life immigrant cannibal.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made the eyebrow-raising revelation during an appearance alongside Trump while visiting a makeshift immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades that has been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Sunshine State officials and the president’s supporters.
“They said that they had detained a cannibal and put him on a plane to take him home, and while they had him in his seat, he started to eat himself, and they had to get him off and get him medical attention,” Noem said.
The revelation came as Noem detailed the Trump administration’s efforts to find and deport millions of migrants who have been living and working in the country, often with official work authorizations, over the last few years. She said the remote Florida facility was going to play a role in removing people who refuse to “self-deport” or who are caught breaking other laws while here illegally.
Noem also said her department is “going after murderers and rapists and traffickers and drug dealers and getting them off the streets and getting them out of this country.”
She went on to accuse Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden, of allowing in “the worst of the worst,” citing an incident described to her by U.S. Marshals who were working with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Noem added that individuals such as that alleged “cannibal” were “the kind of deranged individuals that are on our streets in America that we’re trying to target and get out of our country because they are so deranged, they don’t belong here.”
“They shouldn’t be walking the streets with our children, and they shouldn’t be living in the communities with our families who just want to grow up … raise their children to grow up and get a job and to live the American dream,” she added.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Independent that Noem was referring to an incident she’d alluded to in a post to X on June 27 in which she’d posted a photo of herself onboard an “ICE Air” flight she was using to return from Guatemala after her own plane malfunctioned.
The former South Dakota governor’s reference to cannibalism evoked Trump’s frequent invocation of Dr. Lecter, a serial killer whose first literary appearance was in author Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel Red Dragon but who later took iconic status based on Sir Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of the character in the 1991 film adaptation of Harris’ sequel, The Silence of the Lambs.
The president often brought up the character in public remarks during his 2024 presidential campaign, including his acceptance speech at last year’s Republican National Convention while discussing the caliber of people who were allegedly migrating into the U.S. under Biden.
“Has anyone seen ‘The Silence of the Lambs’? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’d love to have you for dinner. That’s insane asylums. They’re emptying out their insane asylums,” he said.
Ironically, Trump’s frequent claim that he wants to establish a more “merit-based” immigration system makes the fictional cannibal just the kind of immigrant who would benefit from his plans.
According to Harris’ 2006 novel, Hannibal Rising, Lecter was the son of a wealthy Lithuanian family whose parents were killed during the Second World War, who later attended medical school in France before being accepted for a residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
