President Trump, needing a shake-up at the Department of Homeland Security, has turned to a plumber.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma Republican and Mr. Trump’s nominee to replace Kristi Noem as secretary, is the only member of the Senate without a bachelor’s degree. He dropped out at age 20 to take over his family’s plumbing business for his ailing father.
Now he has been tapped for another rescue mission: to resuscitate the president’s mass deportation operation.
Mr. Mullin will appear for his confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where the questions will be less about the nominee and more about Mr. Trump’s overall immigration plans.
“The GOP’s problem is mass deportation, not its messaging or who is running DHS,” said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a leading immigrant rights advocacy group.
Mr. Mullin will appear for his hearing at an unusual time. The department he has been nominated to lead is under a government shutdown.
Democrats have balked at funding the department until Mr. Trump agrees to changes in immigration policy.
It’s not the first time a Cabinet nominee has appeared during a shutdown — William Barr had his hearing for attorney general in January 2019, during a 35-day shutdown in the first Trump term — but it adds to the drama.
Mr. Mullin, 48, doesn’t have a history of working within the homeland security arena.
His committee assignments during his decade in the House and more than three years in the Senate have included the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Indian Affairs committees. He is from Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation.
What Mr. Mullin does bring is fierce loyalty to Mr. Trump’s agenda, as well as significant goodwill from fellow members of Congress, who hope for a different direction from Ms. Noem’s.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said Mr. Mullin would be a “course-correction.”
What that correction would be, though, is not yet clear.
In the days since his nomination, Mr. Mullin has been circumspect in his answers. He told reporters only that there are “always lessons that can be learned” from Ms. Noem’s tenure, but said his focus would be on flexing the tools Capitol Hill has given the department.
“I’m going to enforce the policies and the laws that Congress passed,” he said.
His voting record suggests general support for a pro-enforcement approach. He co-sponsored legislation to expand speedy deportations, as well as the Laken Riley Act, which requires the Homeland Security Department to try to detain illegal immigrants charged with petty offenses, and Sarah’s Law, which requires the detention of migrants accused of crimes that led to a killing.
During the first Trump administration, Mr. Mullin expressed support for a Trump proposal that would have granted firm legal status to illegal immigrant “Dreamers” under the Obama-era DACA program in exchange for funding for the border wall, elimination of the diversity visa program and new limits to the chain of family migration.
Mr. Mullin has maintained good ties all around. He has served as the informal liaison between Republicans in the House and the Senate, helping build lines of communication that he said didn’t exist before.
He has friends among the Democrats, many of whom have attended his early-morning workout classes over the years. He shuts down political talk by making his charges do “burpees,” a high-intensity exercise that goes from a squat to a plank to a leap.
Mr. Mullin has retained excellent ties to the White House. He has been among Mr. Trump’s firmest defenders on immigration and the strikes on boats that the government says are ferrying drugs to the U.S.
“Why would we care? They’re terrorists,” he told The Washington Times last year. “And for President Trump to go out there and say we’re going to stop it? Good on him.”
The White House is expecting big things.
“Markwayne Mullin will do an excellent job leading the Department of Homeland Security and implementing the president’s ‘America First’ agenda,” said Abigail Jackson, a presidential spokeswoman.
Though he has been a colleague for more than three years, Mr. Mullin is making the rounds of fellow senators’ offices, just as other nominees would do.
He has won the enthusiastic backing of many of his Republican Senate colleagues.
“He is a true leader, and I’m confident in his ability to keep our homeland safe,” Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, said after her sit-down with Mr. Mullin.
Groups that want stiffer immigration enforcement are less bullish. They say they aren’t opposed to Mr. Mullin’s confirmation but question whether he can corral the famously unwieldy department.
Born out of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Homeland Security Department has become the island of misfit toys. It includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which the president largely wants to abolish; cybersecurity policy; the Coast Guard; and the Transportation Security Administration.
The department includes the three immigration agencies: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which handles new legal arrivals; Customs and Border Protection, which mans the land, sea and airports and guards the broader boundaries with Mexico and Canada; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose duties include child pornography investigations, interior immigration arrests and deportations.
ICE has grabbed the lion’s share of attention over the past year. Ms. Noem led a push to send officers out into communities to make arrests, sparking a feverish backlash in some places. In Minnesota, the clashes ended with the deaths of two U.S. citizens, shot by Homeland Security Department personnel.
Mr. Mullin, in the immediate aftermath, defended the department’s officers. In the shooting of Renee Good, he said she was “interfering with police activity” after bird-dogging ICE officers and then ignoring their orders to exit her SUV. Instead, she lurched forward and struck one officer.
Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project, said mass deportations have strong support, particularly among the president’s base, but will require a reboot.
“He needs to move enforcement to Phase 2, which is not the shock and awe but the consistent, steady worksite enforcement using a whole-of-government approach to identify and apprehend illegal aliens,” she said. “You can’t get to mass deportations by targeting independent criminals in communities.”
The Immigration Accountability Project just finished a round of polling that found those who backed Mr. Trump in the 2024 election would welcome a push to get deportations over 1 million this year.
Ms. Jenks said that would energize Republican voters in what is shaping up as a turnout battle in the looming midterm elections. It also would require Mr. Mullin to navigate competing views within the administration. “There are some voices in the White House who want to protect employers of illegal aliens and other voices in the White House who absolutely see the need for worksite enforcement,” she said.
“This is all about the donors versus the voters,” she said. “Are you trying to get Republican voters to turn out for the midterms to avoid a shellacking?”
Mr. Mullin — his first name is a combination of two uncles’ names — is a former mixed martial arts fighter claiming an undefeated 5-0 record. His last bout was two decades ago.
He has become an unlikely social media star, with short TikTok videos that explain the latest on politics and Capitol Hill.
“I was like, ‘This is stupid. I’m not doing it.’ But I actually have fun,” he said.
He and his wife have six children, and he told The Times he would “have six more.”
“I absolutely love it. I love chaos,” he said.
He sold a majority stake in his plumbing business while running for Senate.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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