Senate presses Mullin over immigration enforcement plans

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday in a high-stakes confirmation hearing that could see him installed as chief over President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement apparatus. Trump earlier this month named Mullin as his pick to replace current Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Mullin’s confirmation hearing comes at a moment when DHS remains largely unfunded, and when Trump’s immigration agenda faces blowback from the American public. According to national polls conducted by media outlets and organizations from across the political landscape, more Americans oppose Trump’s immigration policies than support them.

That leaves Mullin carrying the hopes of both sides of the aisle. Many Americans—like most of the congressional Democrats arrayed before Mullin on Wednesday—hope the Oklahoma Republican will course-correct on policies they find concerning. At the same time, Republicans and their supporters hope Mullin will continue policies they consider much-needed solutions to a broken immigration system.

Mullin signaled to lawmakers that he would aim to keep the agency out of the spotlight.

“My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every day,” Mullin said of DHS in his opening statement Wednesday, alluding to recent controversies over aggressive immigration enforcement activities. He added later that he hoped to bring “peace of mind” to the country.

Mullin promised to work to make the department’s roughly 250,000 employees and more than 20 agencies proud, and he said he hoped to make any senators who didn’t support his confirmation regret that they hadn’t supported him. He also called on Congress to fund the agency he is slated to take over. DHS remains stuck in a government shutdown caused by disagreement among lawmakers over the department’s immigration enforcement tactics. (Within DHS, however, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection remain funded through provisions of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.)

Mullin faced a gauntlet of questions on Wednesday from Senate colleagues trying to determine how he would spearhead Trump’s most embattled federal agency.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who criticized what she called “lawless behavior” at DHS under Noem, asked Mullin whether he would obey any commands to violate the law that he might receive from the White House. Mullin insisted that he would not follow unlawful commands but would abide by all the laws that he was given and enforce all the laws applicable to his department that had been passed by Congress.

In an exchange with Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., Mullin said he envisioned a future where ICE is more of a transportation agency for ferrying to detention facilities criminals already detained by local police and not a front-line agency pulling people off the streets. But Mullin noted that would require cooperation with local law enforcement.

Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Gary Peters of Michigan questioned Mullin on his comments calling Alex Pretti “deranged” and justifying the shooting of Renee Good shortly after the two Minneapolis protesters’ deaths at the hands of federal agents. Mullin said he regretted his statements about Pretti and wouldn’t speak ahead of investigations on similar matters as secretary. But he declined to retract his comments about Good, saying that she had clearly attacked an ICE agent with a motor vehicle.

Blumenthal also interrogated Mullin about the 3,000-a-day immigration arrest quota that White House adviser Stephen Miller has previously said DHS is operating under. Mullin said that he hadn’t been given an arrest quota but would follow the instructions of the White House.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., told Mullin he thought highly of him. Fetterman, who has become known for breaking with his party on some issues, emphasized that while the deaths of Pretti and Good represented failures by the government, so did the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley at the hands of an illegal immigrant.

Most of the Republican senators questioning Mullin also praised him, with Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, complimenting Mullin for his attempts to engage in bipartisan dialogue and build relationships with people on the opposite side of the aisle.

But committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., confronted Mullin about previous comments he’d made supporting violent resolution to personal conflicts, caning on the Senate floor, and political violence against Paul himself. Paul asked whether that demeanor was fitting for someone leading ICE and CBP agents.

Mullin replied that he and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien—whom he seemingly challenged to a fight in a Senate hearing in 2023—were now good friends who spoke frequently. That was how he preferred to solve problems, Mullin said.

Immigration experts remain divided over how they hope Mullin leads DHS.

“[I want to see] that he emphasizes mass deportations and doesn’t move away from that. That he moves away from just ‘worst of the worst’ in terms of who should be deported,” said Lora Ries, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center. “If you’re looking for aliens with criminal rap sheets here in the U.S.—that gives you hundreds of thousands. But we have at least 20 million deportable aliens in this country. And so ‘worst of the worst’ isn’t enough.”

The White House and political strategists have urged Republicans in Congress not to advocate for mass deportations, Ries told WORLD earlier this week. It’s a strategy she described as confusing, since immigration enforcement is one of the reasons American voters chose Trump in 2024.

A year after Trump’s second inauguration, polling has shown a majority of Americans think Trump has gone too far on immigration. They hold an especially critical view of ICE.

Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, told WORLD before Mullin’s confirmation hearing that she hoped he would push DHS to only deport the “worst of the worst”—and not go beyond it.

“[Mullin’s nomination] really gives us an opportunity for DHS to kind of hit reset on what the priorities will be,” Murray said. “Will the administration focus enforcement efforts on violent criminals, as was promised to voters throughout the election cycle? Or will we see a continuation of what we’ve seen from the Trump administration so far … where we’ve seen that over 75% of people that have been detained and deported have no criminal history?”

DHS has disputed the claim that only a small percentage of individuals that ICE detains have a violent criminal record. Certain offenses that most Americans would consider to be violent or perverse are not technically considered “violent” on some DHS paperwork. Those include drug trafficking, distribution of child pornography, burglary, and drunk driving, according to former Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

Murray said that Mullin’s nomination could be more than just an opportunity for change at DHS.

“Markwayne Mullin, as a senator, was often in conversations around immigration solutions and not just enforcement-only approaches,” Murray said. “[He’s] already shown that he’s willing to look at what’s that balance between keeping America secure and also having a humane immigration system.”