Senate Mullin support for Trump immigration policies under microscope with DHS nomination by Rebecca Beitsch - 03/10/26 6:27 PM ET by Rebecca Beitsch - 03/10/26 6:27 PM ET Share ✕ LinkedIn LinkedIn Email Email NOW PLAYING Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) has teased changes in the operations at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), though the close ally of President Trump has largely backed the White House’s immigration moves. Mullin would take over DHS amid heightened scrutiny over its operations on everything from aggressive immigration enforcement to delays in distributing disaster funds through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He hasn’t given any public details about how he plans to shift away from any of DHS’s current practices, but he didn’t rule out changes. “There’s an opportunity to build off successes, and there’s also opportunities to build off things that didn’t go as planned,” he told reporters last week shortly after Trump announced he was firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “There’s a lot of work we can do to get the Department of Homeland Security working for the American people.” Should he be confirmed, Mullin would take the helm of the agency as polling shows growing dissatisfaction with how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has carried out raids, a practice that has even earned pushback from some of his GOP colleagues. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) blasted the agency for being focused on quantity over quality, while Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said deportations had gone “a little bit off the rails.” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a longtime colleague of Mullin in the Oklahoma delegation, praised the senator as someone who would be “politically sensitive” to growing backlash to immigration operations. “Markwayne’s very much his own person, so, but I would expect — look, he’s always been strong on the border. He’s always felt strongly about the importance of homeland security. But I think he’ll be politically sensitive to what the current situation is,” Cole told reporters Thursday. In public comments, Mullin has backed some of Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, from arguing that ICE should not have to display ID to support for “Remain in Mexico,” which barred asylum seekers from staying in the U.S. while pursuing the status. “The first step to combatting illegal immigration is to secure our borders. I have visited the southern border and witnessed firsthand the challenges our border patrol agents face. We are a nation of laws and those laws must be upheld. We must ensure our immigration laws [are] enforced, bring back the Remain in Mexico policy, finish building the wall, and end the liberal incentives that are fueling the worst border crisis in American history,” Mullin writes on his Senate website. Mullin’s office did not respond to request for comment for this story. He’s also echoed comments from Noem criticizing the actions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti after they were shot and killed in Minnesota — a line of remarks that got Noem in trouble with members of both sides of the aisle during an appearance before lawmakers just before she was removed. Mullin called Pretti a “deranged individual” and also defended the officer who killed Good, saying he “didn’t have an option” and had to “engage.” “It is mind-blowing to me why we are defending someone that was acting this in this manner,” Mullin said of Good, the 37-year-old mother shot by an ICE agent, adding “clearly, …she hit an ICE agent.” Following the decision by the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s death, Mullin instead said focus should be on alleged paid demonstrators. “If they’re investigating anything, they need to be investigating the paid protesters, and who’s paying them to obstruct federal officers from doing their job,” Mullin said on CNN in January. “What needs to be looked at is, why are these individuals thinking it’s OK to interfere with a federal officer? That is a federal offense by itself. And yet, they’re getting in the way of these individuals executing the job.” While Mullin has said he supports body cameras for immigration officers, he said if people “expose their faces” they risk being doxxed. The senator has also backed the idea of deporting U.S. citizen children alongside their noncitizen parents. The deportations generated backlash last year, when it was revealed the Trump administration removed several American children alongside their parents, including some undergoing treatment for cancer. “They should go where their parents are. Why wouldn’t you send a child with their parents?