Less than six months into Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s tenure atop America’s sprawling immigration and internal security bureaucracy, President Donald Trump and some of his most vocal allies are having second thoughts about the former Oklahoma senator’s job performance.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump’s angst over his decision to elevate the 49-year-old ex-mixed martial arts fighter and plumbing business owner to lead one of the cabinet’s most important departments has been simmering since his March confirmation, which followed the president’s decision to fire Mullin’s predecessor Kristi Noem amid outrage over a series of shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other scandals that had plagued her tenure atop the department.
Though Mullin was tasked with calming public anger at DHS after ham-handed deployments in Minneapolis gave the administration a black eye, Trump allies have bristled at anything that even smacks of moderating the harsh immigration and deportation policies that have become a staple of the president’s second term.
After a June Supreme Court ruling allowing DHS to end temporary protections for as many as 350,000 Haitians living across the U.S., Mullin suggested that some could “fill out the paperwork” to gain some form of legal status — something that directly contradicted Trump’s promise to deport as many Haitians as possible from the U.S.
A month later, Mullin got crosswise with Trump after he directed ICE to stop most traffic stops after a pair of fatal shootings — a move that prompted Trump to publicly overrule the DHS boss, writing that Mullin’s attempt to curb the practice was something “the Radical Left [Democrats]” had wanted.
The decision sparked outrage from MAGA personalities, including right-wing legal activist Mike Davis, who complained on ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast that Mullin “needs to stop being a wimp, he needs to stop being weak, he needs to stop being stupid” and upbraided him for seemingly bowing to a request from Maine Senator Susan Collins.
“You work for President Trump, you don’t work for Senate Democrats, you don’t work for Susan Collins ... If he’s not up to doing the job, get the hell out of the job and we’ll put someone there who can,” Davis said at the time.
Earlier this month, Mullin triggered MAGA fury once more when he told National Governors Association members that immigration could be a benefit to some industries, directly contradicting the administration position that immigrants steal jobs from American citizens, and suggested that immigration could provide needed workers in some industries.
One Trump ally, activist Laura Loomer, reacted by posting on X that Mullin should be sacked because he has “done absolutely nothing to increase the rate of mass deportations.”
Trump himself has also groused about Mullin’s attempt to postpone an Independence Day fireworks display Trump had touted after severe thunderstorms threatened the safety of those who’d been waiting on the National Mall to watch the show.
At the time, the president complained that “one of my very brilliant people” had suggested postponing the show after lightning forced the Mall’s evacuation.
“I said, ‘It doesn’t work next week. This is the big day. We want July Fourth. We’re not looking for July something else,’” he said.
The White House denied any tensions between the president and his DHS pick, with spokesperson Lauren Bis noting in a statement that Trump “has confidence in his Cabinet to carry out the agenda the American people voted for.”
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership we have the most secure border in history, we are deporting record numbers of illegal aliens, we have cracked down on illegal alien fraud, and we are denaturalizing individuals who illegally procured American citizenship,” she said.
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