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.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.
