A solid-gold Rolex and prisoners as props

Full story: How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flashpoint

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, she posted a video from one of the notoriously overcrowded mega-prison's cell blocks that struck many as hard to watch. "This is next level disturbing," one Bluesky user wrote. "Human beings are not props."

Adding to the vertigo of the scene was Noem's watch – a bulky gold timepiece that some online raced to identify. So we contacted three vintage-timepiece experts, sending them as many photos from the scene as we could find, and asked them what they could determine: What was it? Was it real? And what'd it cost?

They all agreed: It was an 18-karat Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch from the early 2000s, which retails for between $40,000 to $60,000. (Its unconventional screw-down "chronograph pushers" were one giveaway.) For immigration advocates, the choice only added to the insensitivity of the scene:

“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.”

DHS' statement:

“During women’s history month, it becomes particularly glaring that I have yet to see the Washington Post write a story on a man in leadership’s watch, they seem to just reserve such scrutiny for a female Secretary of Homeland Security who has secured the border to greatest level seen in American history. The Washington Post should stop embarrassing itself and focus on substance not sartorial choices.

But since you’re so  interested, 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.”

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