The Senate confirmed Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Monday to serve as the next secretary of Homeland Security, putting the Oklahoma Republican in charge of immigration enforcement, one of President Trump’s biggest priorities in his second term.
Mullin won the confirmation in a 54-45 vote. He will be the second secretary to lead the department during this Trump administration, replacing Kristi Noem. He comes to the helm in the midst of a shutdown that has left 100,000 of the department’s more than a quarter-million employees working without pay.
During his confirmation hearing, Mullin, 48, called on senators to fund DHS as quickly as possible and said he wanted to take on the responsibility of leading the sprawling agency.
“I’m not scared of a challenge. I am scared of failure, and so I will work hard each day,” Mullin said during the hearing. “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day. My goal is for people to understand we’re out there. We’re protecting them, and we’re working with them. My goal is to make every one of you guys proud.”
DHS has been at the center of Trump’s mass deportation plans, kicked off by the slew of executive actions the president signed when he returned to the White House.
In the last year, DHS has significantly expanded its efforts — in part due to tens of billions of dollars Republicans provided in a partisan bill passed last summer. The administration has cut encounters at the southwest border to a record low, curbed legal migration, and placed a record-high number of people in immigration detention.
It’s also taken an aggressive approach to enforcement by conducting “surges” of immigration officers to cities like Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and Minneapolis. The latest surge in Minneapolis resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens by federal agents. Another U.S. citizen was killed last year in Texas.
Outgoing Secretary Noem was the face of many of these efforts, frequently appearing on television and in paid advertisements, or offering statements that defended the administration’s actions.
But Noem faced bipartisan criticism after calling the actions of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old shot by Border Patrol agents, “domestic terrorism.” She was also criticized over how DHS awarded contracts for a $250 million ad campaign encouraging immigrants to self-deport, after Noem said Trump had approved the spending.
Mullin pledged a somewhat softer touch on immigration, and to engage with critics. Two Democrats — John Fetterman, D-Penn., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. — supported his nomination.
For example, during his hearing, Mullin vowed to visit a town in New Jersey where the agency is seeking to convert warehouses into detention centers.
He also said that judicial warrants should be used to go into houses and places of business unless officers are pursuing someone already. His remarks offered a possible concession to Democrats, who have demanded that DHS reduce its reliance on administrative warrants — those the department approves itself without a judge — as part of any agreement to end the DHS shutdown.
Mullin also said he believed the Federal Emergency Management Agency needed to be restructured — and not eliminated, as some in the Trump administration have floated. Many lawmakers’ states depend on millions of federal dollars to assist in natural disasters and other emergencies, and Noem had also faced criticism for how efficiently the agency distributed disaster relief.
But Mullin also deflected questions regarding whether former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election and whether he would place DHS uniformed officers at polling locations throughout the midterms. (Among other things, DHS focuses on election security, including providing grants to states.) Mullin has been a supporter of the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote, and the administration’s actions in Venezuela and Iran.
In a moment of bipartisan scrutiny, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., also raised concerns about Mullin’s foreign travel. They questioned Mullin about where he had traveled when he “smelled” war — as he put it — and why those trips were not disclosed on federal reports. Both voted against Mullin.
The issue was set to be further discussed behind closed doors as some lawmakers asked for a confidential briefing.
“I do not believe that he is the right person for the job,” Peters said Monday before voting against Mullin’s confirmation. “We need a secretary who is a steady leader who won’t rush to judgement without having all the facts and who won’t add fuel to the fire when there is a crisis.”
Peters and other Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed Mullin’s nomination with a few exceptions, also said that a change in leadership at the top would not deliver the kind of course correction that Americans have demanded.
Some lawmakers had been hopeful that Mullin would provide a steadier hand than his predecessor and possibly help grease stalled talks between Senate Democrats and the White House on how to fund DHS and limit the tactics of federal immigration agents.
But that effort hit a major roadblock over the weekend once Trump insisted that any deal also include the voting law overhaul he has been pushing, the Save America Act. With Trump and his advisers in the White House directing strategy from the top, it is unclear how much Mullin will change the dynamic.
But at least a few Democrats said they were hopeful. Heinrich called Mullin a friend and voted to confirm him.
“We often disagree and when we do, we work to find whatever common ground we share,” Heinrich wrote in a statement. “I have also seen first-hand that Markwayne is not someone who can simply be bullied into changing his views, and I look forward to having a Secretary who doesn’t take their orders from Stephen Miller,” referring to Trump’s longtime White House adviser.
