Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is already the subject of “growing tensions” with the White House just four months into his tenure, according to a report.
The secretary, previously an Oklahoma senator, is said to have first created friction by placing a pause on ICE traffic stops after two men were shot dead in separate incidents in Maine and Texas earlier this month, NBC reports.
Mullin gave the order to pause the tactic, “effective immediately,” after the killings of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 28-year-old Colombian man living in Maine, and of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three children in Houston.
However, he did so without President Donald Trump’s approval, an administration official told the network, prompting the president to take to Truth Social to angrily and very publicly contradict him.
“CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades,” Trump wrote on his platform.
“The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted. Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out.
“In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
NBC’s source implied Mullin had made a rookie mistake, saying: “Every cabinet secretary knows that they have to come to the White House for major policy decisions. The president sees, hears, reads everything.”
The secretary is also said to have created “annoyance” among senior members of the administration when he “misspoke” during a recent CNN interview.
Discussing a Supreme Court ruling on protected status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, Mullin said that hundreds of thousands people from those countries could apply for legal status when they could not.
The secretary’s decision to nominate Lance Schroyer to be ICE’s next director has also not gone down well either.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and others “aren’t particularly thrilled with him,” NBC’s source said, believing that Schroyer lacks the necessary experience.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded to the report by saying: “Secretary Mullin is working hard to implement the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.
“Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Mullin, the border is totally secure, dangerous illegal immigrants are being deported, and Americans are safer. Secretary Mullin will continue to enforce federal immigration law as effectively as possible.”
The Independent has also reached out to the White House and DHS for further comment.
Republican lawmakers initially praised Mullin for inspiring a “sea of change” at the DHS, following the departure of his scandal-hit predecessor Kristi Noem.
Noem was removed from her role spearheading the administration’s illegal immigration crackdown by Trump in March after a little over a year in charge, the president having reportedly grown weary of the “constant chaos” surrounding her and the negative press coverage she attracted.
Noem notoriously labeled the Minneapolis protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot dead by federal forces, “domestic terrorists” and refused to apologize when the characterization was proven to be incorrect.
A bombshell report in The Wall Street Journal in February then alleged that she and her top aide Corey Lewandowski were engaged in an extramarital affair, which both parties vehemently denied, and accused her of seeking to “burnish her personal stardom at every turn.”
Noem left office reportedly feeling she had been “thrown under the bus” but the news left DHS staffers “actually crying out of happiness,” according to one report.
