A little over four months after being sworn in as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin has already rubbed some people within the White House and President Donald Trump's inner circle the wrong way, according to a new report.
According to a senior administration official and a senior DHS official who spoke with NBC News, Mullin has already "annoyed" Trump administration officials after he paused vehicle stops conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the killings of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 28-year-old Colombian man living in Maine, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three in Houston.
The sources said Mullin signed off on the plan without approval from the White House or Trump, departing from the administration's usual process and potentially undermining the president's authority.
"Every Cabinet secretary knows that they have to come to the White House for major policy decisions. The president sees, hears, reads everything," the administration official told NBC News.
After Mullin paused ICE's traffic stops, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that traffic stops are one of ICE's most important and effective "crime fighting tools," adding that the U.S. "cannot give up" on them and that suspending stops would play "right into the criminal's hands."
"The Radical Left Democrats would like to see this done, but it won't happen under my watch," he wrote.
According to NBC News' sources, another issue that drew scrutiny to Mullin's leadership of DHS was his comments during a CNN interview last month, when he said that 350,000 immigrants from Haiti and Syria could apply for legal status even though the Supreme Court had ruled against temporary protected status for people from those countries.
"If you have been here and you have been living off the taxpayer dollars, meaning that you have you're part of social, those won't be accepted," Mullin told CNN's Jake Tapper. "If you have been here and you have had a full-time paying job, under some circumstances, those would apply.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling found that former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to revoke TPS for those individuals was not subject to judicial review because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate racial bias and were not entitled to interim protections.
According to NBC News' sources, Mullin also does not have the full backing of other immigration officials. He pushed for Lance Schroyer, a former U.S. Marine, to become ICE's new director, a move that reportedly frustrated Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, who believed Schroyer lacked sufficient experience in immigration enforcement.
"Homan and others aren't particularly thrilled with him," the administration official said.
The NBC News report was rejected by White House officials, with Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson telling the outlet that Mullin is "working hard to implement the President's immigration enforcement agenda," adding that he will continue enforcing federal immigration laws "as effectively as possible."
