Mullin support for Trump immigration policies under microscope with DHS nomination

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) has teased changes in the operations at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), though the close ally of President Trump has largely backed the White House’s immigration moves.

Mullin would take over DHS amid heightened scrutiny over its operations on everything from aggressive immigration enforcement to delays in distributing disaster funds through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

He hasn’t given any public details about how he plans to shift away from any of DHS’s current practices, but he didn’t rule out changes.

“There’s an opportunity to build off successes, and there’s also opportunities to build off things that didn’t go as planned,” he told reporters last week shortly after Trump announced he was firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“There’s a lot of work we can do to get the Department of Homeland Security working for the American people.”

Should he be confirmed, Mullin would take the helm of the agency as polling shows growing dissatisfaction with how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has carried out raids, a practice that has even earned pushback from some of his GOP colleagues. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) blasted the agency for being focused on quantity over quality, while Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said deportations had gone “a little bit off the rails.”

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a longtime colleague of Mullin in the Oklahoma delegation, praised the senator as someone who would be “politically sensitive” to growing backlash to immigration operations.

“Markwayne’s very much his own person, so, but I would expect — look, he’s always been strong on the border. He’s always felt strongly about the importance of homeland security. But I think he’ll be politically sensitive to what the current situation is,” Cole told reporters Thursday.

In public comments, Mullin has backed some of Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, from arguing that ICE should not have to display ID to support for “Remain in Mexico,” which barred asylum seekers from staying in the U.S. while pursuing the status.

“The first step to combatting illegal immigration is to secure our borders. I have visited the southern border and witnessed firsthand the challenges our border patrol agents face. We are a nation of laws and those laws must be upheld. We must ensure our immigration laws [are] enforced, bring back the Remain in Mexico policy, finish building the wall, and end the liberal incentives that are fueling the worst border crisis in American history,” Mullin writes on his Senate website.

Mullin’s office did not respond to request for comment for this story.

He’s also echoed comments from Noem criticizing the actions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti after they were shot and killed in Minnesota — a line of remarks that got Noem in trouble with members of both sides of the aisle during an appearance before lawmakers just before she was removed.

Mullin called Pretti a “deranged individual” and also defended the officer who killed Good, saying he “didn’t have an option” and had to “engage.”

“It is mind-blowing to me why we are defending someone that was acting this in this manner,” Mullin said of Good, the 37-year-old mother shot by an ICE agent, adding “clearly, …she hit an ICE agent.”

Following the decision by the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s death, Mullin instead said focus should be on alleged paid demonstrators.

“If they’re investigating anything, they need to be investigating the paid protesters, and who’s paying them to obstruct federal officers from doing their job,” Mullin said on CNN in January.

“What needs to be looked at is, why are these individuals thinking it’s OK to interfere with a federal officer? That is a federal offense by itself. And yet, they’re getting in the way of these individuals executing the job.”

While Mullin has said he supports body cameras for immigration officers, he said if people “expose their faces” they risk being doxxed.

The senator has also backed the idea of deporting U.S. citizen children alongside their noncitizen parents. The deportations generated backlash last year, when it was revealed the Trump administration removed several American children alongside their parents, including some undergoing treatment for cancer.

“They should go where their parents are. Why wouldn’t you send a child with their parents? I mean, why would you want to separate them? I wouldn’t want to be separated from my kid. And no parent should want to be separated from their kid. So if their parents are deported, then the child should most definitely go with the parents,” he said during a June appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Immigration advocates have criticized the deportations, saying the children have a right to remain in the U.S. alongside their parents, rather than force those being deported to make the impossible choice of whether to leave without their children.

Mullin, however, suggested the parents in those situations were trying to “game the system.”

“There’s a whole industry that is stood up to bring people here in their last month of pregnancy to have a child here….It’s a whole industry. You know it and I know it,” he said during the same appearance.

In a related move, he also supported boat strikes in the Caribbean that the Trump administration argued were needed to take out cartel personnel ferrying drugs.

The action was blasted as illegal and immoral by many Senate Democrats, who argued the U.S. did not have the legal authority to carry out the killings and argued it was an inappropriate response to unproven allegations that, even in cases of a conviction, do not receive the death penalty.

The killings were also criticized by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is set to review Mullin’s nomination next week. Paul previously noted that during interdictions made by the Coast Guard, officers fail to find drugs about a quarter of the time.

Last November, Mullin defended the practice.

“Are we doubting that these drug dealers are actually drug leaders? We think they’re just out there fishing? Do we doubt that this is a terrorist organization that’s killing thousands and thousands of people in our streets? What are we questioning here?” Mullin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It is a war because they have declared war on our streets, and the president and [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth is doing exactly what we should be doing, being proactive against our enemies, and that’s what they’re doing here, and I applaud them for doing something,” 

Mullin last week also suggested that he would not let politics dominate a desire to keep the homeland safe.

“When I go into this position, yes, I’m a Republican, yes, I’m conservative, but the Department of Homeland Security is to keep everybody [safe], regardless of if you support me or you don’t support me, regardless of what your thoughts are,” he told reporters.

In the past, however, he has suggested withholding support from cities that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement.

“The truth is, I agree with what [Sen.] Lindsey [Graham] (R-S.C.) is saying on defunding these sanctuary cities. We should pull out our TSA agents out of—out of their airports and not allow their airport to be classified as international or even a regional hub,” he said during an appearance on Fox News, referring to the Transportation Security Administration.

For those dissatisfied with Noem’s tenure, few are convinced that Mullin’s confirmation would make much difference.

“I just don’t think the nameplate on the door changing matters that much because Stephen Miller runs that department,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters in the hours after Noem’s ouster.

“I’m glad she’s gone. She was incompetent and horrible for the country, but she wasn’t in charge. Stephen Miller’s in charge, and that doesn’t change.”

But Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who was first elected to the House at the same time as Mullin, praised him as someone who would bring a steady hand to all component agencies of DHS beyond those dealing with immigration.

“He is a loyal, committed and devoted ally of this president, and he will do an outstanding job at Homeland Security,” Barr told The Hill.

“He’s going to continue to prioritize securing the border and deporting illegal criminal aliens who threaten our homeland security, and he’s going to do a great job. And he’s going to have the backs of the men and women of the Coast Guard and FEMA and TSA, and ICE, and Customs and Border Protection, and they’re gonna have no greater champion than than Markwayne Mullen, who appreciates their mission.”

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