By Sam Barron | Monday, 20 April 2026 08:37 PM EDT
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on Monday that Democrats are attempting to shut down his department because they do not want to enforce immigration laws.
“I’ve got a building full of people, and people scattered all over the United States and our territories trying to protect the homeland, and you got the Democrats that want to shut it down,” Mullin stated.
“They want open borders, and they don’t want to enforce immigration laws. I can’t make sense out of crazy.”
Mullin added that Democrats are playing political theater with a department that has a huge responsibility.
“They’re scared of their base. You can’t explain to me why you don’t want to fund Department of Homeland Security,” he said.
“That’s like saying, ‘I’m going to defund the Department of War.’ The Department of War comes up to our shores; the Department of Homeland Security protects everything in our backyard,” he continued.
“And yet they’re saying they’re not wanting to do it because two out of 22 agencies. They want to shut down ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], which is deporting felons every single day that are killing innocent people on our streets because they should have never been let in here under the Biden administration, and our Customs and Border Patrol.”
Mullin said the Democratic Party’s base that wants to shut down ICE is the same group that supports Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City and former Rep. Eric Swalwell in California.
“These are the same individuals that they want to defund police, and they haven’t changed their tactics. They’re still the same tactics,” he said.
“They’re just using different terms, and they keep getting more and more radical. They’re openly embracing socialism now,” Mullin added.
“They’re openly embracing the fact that they don’t want to have law and order in our streets. You can’t argue with that,” he said, pointing to cities such as Portland, Oregon; New York City; and Los Angeles, and questioning how well they are being run.
Mullin stated that if Congress wants to change how ICE and Customs and Border Protection operate, lawmakers should change the laws.
“Defunding them is a chicken way to do it, because you don’t want to take a hard stand, because you don’t want to sit there and say that we really want to change the policies, but we need to rewrite them,” he said.
“But truth is, you really don’t want to rewrite them, because you want to actually have your family living under the laws that you passed. But you don’t want to stand up for the policies you passed because you want to get reelected in your primary,” Mullin added.
