Most Cabinet nominees sitting before a Senate panel likely do so with at least some trepidation. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, has less to worry about. As the junior senator from Oklahoma, who previously served five terms in the House, Mullin has a bit of an in.
By most accounts, he’s well-liked on Capitol Hill and on both sides of the aisle. And traditionally speaking, senators tend to get confirmed easily. Just look at Marco Rubio’s cakewalk to confirmation as secretary of state , even during the fraught political climate at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The problem Senate Democrats have is not with Mullin himself, but with the position he’s intended to fill.
The problem Senate Democrats have is not with Mullin himself, but with the position he’s intended to fill. DHS was a mess even before outgoing secretary Kristi Noem’s yearlong tenure began. The sprawling tangled web of agencies cobbled together in 2002 has spent its entire existence amid a perpetual identity crisis. The agency’s current focus on immigration — to the detriment of all other security responsibilities — is one that Mullin will be poorly situated to change. That is, if he even wanted to.
With more than 260,000 employees, DHS is the third-largest department in the federal government. At its founding, it was meant to be a bulwark against more acts of terrorism like the one that had rocked the nation less than a year earlier. But its remit also includes matters far beyond that scope — to include policing the borders, responding after natural disasters and protecting cyber infrastructure.
Tucked within that vast portfolio was responsibility for immigration enforcement, both at ports of entry and within the interior. DHS has pivoted since Trump’s return to office from being a struggling jack-of-all-trades to having a monomaniacal focus on carrying out his mass deportation policies.
Under the watchful eye of White House homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, parts of the department that had little to do with immigration were conscripted into service. An agent with Homeland Security Investigations testified last June that his branch, which is typically focused on criminal activity, had been “prioritizing Title VIII [immigration and nationality laws] more than we have been since I’ve been here.”
Mullin also isn’t bringing much experience to the role, either in terms of the overall portfolio or a broader leadership position.
As he takes his seat across from his Senate colleagues on Wednesday, the department Mullin will be running has been partially shut down for more than a month. Democrats have refused to fund DHS so long as Trump’s aggressive mass deportation tactics remain in effect. But the components most affected are those that were front and center in other iterations of DHS, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Transportation Security Administration. Thanks to a massive surge in funding from last year’s GOP-passed mega bill, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s and the Border Patrol’s unchecked, aggressive tactics have been largely unaffected.
It’s an irony that seems unlikely to change with Mullin’s all but certain ascension. He might represent a “course correction” from Noem’s time as secretary, as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., recently put it. On one level, that’s not difficult, given the reported infighting that she and her chief adviser, Corey Lewandowski, fostered during her tenure. But the course that Mullin will be expected to take is still the one that Miller will have charted and that Democrats remain steadfastly against.
Mullin also isn’t bringing much experience to the role, either in terms of the overall portfolio or a broader leadership position. His colleagues, per CNN, agree that “Mullin isn’t a big details guy or policy wonk.” Nor has he sat on committees dealing with the many issues that will come across his desk. Instead, it seems they’re hoping that if Mullin is merely less of a spotlight seeker than Noem (and without Lewandowski in tow), DHS will naturally right itself.
That leaves many unanswered questions: Will the department’s social media team keep posting white-nationalist messaging under Mullin? How much will he be following the quieter, but still zealous, strategy that White House border czar Tom Homan would prefer to implement? And, most importantly, will there be any deviation from Miller’s goal of deporting as many immigrants as possible each year?
For now, Senate Democrats (mostly) are wary about Mullin taking the reins on mass deportation efforts, even as the administration turns down the volume following Noem’s ouster. His close relationship with Trump, reportedly the closest any rank-and-file GOP lawmaker has with the president, means that he will be less likely to draw his boss’ ire than his predecessor. And for the Republicans who will rush to confirm him, that seal of approval from the White House is far more important than anything he could possibly say about the policies he’ll soon be carrying out.
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