President Donald Trump’s next pick to lead the controversy-consumed Department of Homeland Security isn’t backing down from a mission to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible.
Based on his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) wants to find ways to turn down the heat the department has faced and still support Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
“My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day,” he said. “My goal is for people to understand we’re out there, we’re protecting them, and we’re working with them.”
But Mullin will probably be in the news, if he’s confirmed by the Republican Senate as expected, given that he’ll take over a department infused with billions of dollars to continue detaining and deporting migrants living in the country illegally at a time when Trump’s handling of immigration is unpopular with Americans and under scrutiny from Congress. Here’s what to know about the likely next head of DHS.
He’s got bipartisan opposition … and maybe some bipartisan support
The chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), tore into Mullin for previously saying he could understand why Paul was brutally attacked years ago at his home.
“I was shocked that you would justify and celebrate this violent assault that caused me so much pain and my family so much pain,” Paul said. “I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force?”
Paul pointed out that Mullin has a history of embracing violence. “Stand your butt up,” Mullin once challenged Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, during a congressional hearing. Paul played tape of Mullin reminiscing on podcasts of dueling as a way to settle disputes.
Mullin said he didn’t regret his sympathetic comments about Paul’s attacker. He did point out that O’Brien, sitting in the hearing audience Wednesday, is now a friend.
At least two Democratic senators backed up Mullin’s character: “My experience with you has been consistent kindness and professionalism,” said Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who often challenges his own party.
“I think you’re an upstanding guy,” Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said, “And I reject this idea that you’re not qualified for this job 100 percent.”
He would like ICE to tone it down
Mullin is no critic of the president or his mass deportation efforts. But the senator is probably aware that Trump ousted Kristi L. Noem as DHS secretary after even some Republicans began questioning her unapologetic stewardship of the deportation agenda and her use of federal resources.
Mullin gave no indication he would stop pursuing a White House goal of arresting 3,000 migrants a day, but he appeared to back away from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s more controversial tactics.
He said he wanted ICE agents to work more behind the scenes rather than surging into cities and looking for migrants in country clubs, in big-box stores, near schools and in people’s homes.
“I would love to see ICE become a transport more than the front line,” he said. “If we can get back to simply working with law enforcement, we’re going to them and picking them up from their jails.”
Mullin also said immigration agents would stop entering homes without a warrant from a court.
He also backed down from his comments about protester Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by federal agents in January during an immigration crackdown in Minnesota. At the time, Mullin asserted that Pretti came intent on causing “maximum damage.”
“I went out there too fast,” Mullin said Thursday. “I was responding immediately without the facts. That’s my fault. That won’t happen as secretary.”
He did not retract comments he made that the shooting of protester Renée Good in her car by an ICE officer was justified.
Mullin wouldn’t say whether he’d break from Trump if asked to do something illegal, maintaining that he’d work within the confines of the law and the Constitution.
“I want to make sure if you’re there, you’re in charge, not Stephen Miller,” Gallego said, referring to the top White House aide who has helped design Trump’s mass deportation policy.
“I will still be talking to the president on a regular basis,” Mullin responded.
He’s an election denier
DHS has been focused under Trump on deportations, but it was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the mandate to protect Americans from terrorism, including and especially during elections.
Democrats raised concerns that Trump could use the department to meddle in the election results, focusing heavily on Mullin’s refusal to say that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 election. (“We know President Joe Biden was sworn into office,” he replied.)
Mullin didn’t rule out sending federal officers to polling locations, saying he would do that only if there was a threat.
“There is zero trust here,” responded Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), “and I cannot trust that [Trump] won’t try and steal it again.”
Mullin also supports the administration’s recent investigations into the 2020 election in states Trump lost, including Georgia and Arizona. In Georgia, DHS officials have taken hundreds of ballots from an Atlanta-area county.
“I do know that there’s an opportunity to look at 2020 and make sure that anything that went wrong, we can fix moving forward,” Mullin said.
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