How Kristi Noem's $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flashpoint [View all]

[douglas9]

The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to her tour of a notoriously overcrowded mega-prison in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.

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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/27/kristi-noem-rolex-controversy/