part of his security detail<\/a> while Mr. Mullin served in the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n\u201cIn politics, you can do that,\u201d Mr. Morgan said of elevating friends and allies. \u201cI think that\u2019s part of the problem right now with this secretary, is that he\u2019s running the job as if he was still a politician,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the first time Mr. Mullin has been overruled by the White House.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, ICE halted nearly all traffic stops following the shooting of a Colombian man by ICE officers in Maine. Shortly after the order went out internally, however, Mr. Trump sent a message on social media that the stops would continue. Mr. Trump was unhappy with Mr. Mullin for getting ahead of the White House on the traffic stop pause, according to a person familiar with the president\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mullin said in June that Haitians who recently lost deportation protections could stay in the country if they applied for legal status \u2014 a message that angered members of Mr. Trump\u2019s base who expected them to be immediately and aggressively deported.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mullin further alienated immigration hawks during an appearance at the National Governors Association conference in August.<\/p>\n
He emphasized that nearly a million people had received U.S. citizenship during the Trump administration. He told governors he would stay out of their communities if ICE was given access to immigrants in their jails. And he appeared to express support for immigration reform.<\/p>\n
After an onslaught of criticism from the right, Mr. Mullin tried to do damage control.<\/p>\n
\u201cNO amnesty for illegal aliens. Ever. We are a nation of laws,\u201d he said on X. \u201cIf you are illegally present in the United States of America \u2014 you will be detained and deported. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nick Sortor, a prominent pro-Trump influencer, was unconvinced.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you truly mean that, I\u2019d probably refrain from signaling to illegals that ICE \u2018won\u2019t be seen\u2019 in their cities as long as the \u2018worst of the worst\u2019 are turned over,\u201d he responded on X. Mr. Sortor has more than 1.5 million followers on the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I look up, I see a new terrible answer or thought coming out of Mark Mullin\u2019s mouth in this interview,\u201d wrote Greg Bovino, the outspoken former Border Patrol official, in a social media post. Mr. Bovino ran major immigration enforcement operations under Mr. Mullin\u2019s predecessor, Kristi Noem.<\/p>\n
The tensions are partially a function of the tough job of being the secretary of homeland security under Mr. Trump. The secretary must balance the president\u2019s desire for a historic immigration crackdown with his demand for good press and polling numbers. The person works in tandem with two powerful figures in the White House \u2014 Mr. Homan and the senior adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner \u2014 who have the president\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n
And the task of following through on Mr. Trump\u2019s pledge of \u201cmass deportations\u201d is, in many ways, set up for failure because of the complex realities of deportations, which require high levels of man-power, detention, planes and buses, and agreements with countries for quick removals.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mullin\u2019s particular challenge was to do all that while repairing the Homeland Security Department\u2019s image. Under Ms. Noem, the agency\u2019s fired former director, D.H.S. mounted an aggressive and widely unpopular immigration crackdown in Minnesota in which two U.S. citizens died at the hands of federal agents. Mr. Mullin pledged to keep a lower profile but his softer tone backfired with the base.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s having to balance what he\u2019s being directed to do from the White House, against a political backdrop, and the reality that they have not achieved mass deportations,\u201d Mr. Morgan said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really tough position.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In recent weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has positioned himself as the unapologetic voice of the Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[9207,1452,51478,11598,9205,11595,131358,75,84,83,88560,88559,9,24,63,131357,51479,1069,901,1876],"class_list":["post-351900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-deportation","tag-donald-j","tag-homan","tag-homeland-security-department","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-us","tag-lance","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-markwayne","tag-mullin","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-schroyer","tag-thomas-d","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}