The new Secretary of Homeland Security, the former senator, most responsible for enforcing the immigration agenda of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, continued his obligation to appear before the Capitol this Wednesday with a hearing in the House of Representatives. And in it, he talked about Mexico.
“I just returned from Mexico City from speaking with the president [Claudia] Sheinbaum and his cabinet on cooperation and I will tell you that we have been impressed that they have been very cooperative, much more cooperative than the last Administration,” Mullin said before the House Homeland Security committee. “They still believe in their sovereignty and we must respect that,” he added.
On Tuesday, he did the same in the Senate. It was his first appearance at the Capitol since his election, replacing Kristi Noem, one of the first officials to leave Trump’s Cabinet after a year full of controversy. Criticism of Noem’s management of the Trump Administration’s deportation campaign reached its peak between January and February in Minneapolis, where two American citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, were shot dead by agents.
Mullin avoided confirming on Tuesday that his department will carry out court orders that seek to curb the activities of the immigration agencies under his charge, arguing that many of them are politicized. The former senator from Oklahoma thus responded to questions from Senator Chris Murphy (Connecticut). Both starred in the most tense moments of their hearing before the national security appropriations subcommittee, held at the Capitol.
The White House requests $63 billion in budget for the DHS, on which the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) and the Office of Border Protection (CBP) depend. These numbers correspond to 2027 and represent a decrease of 2.2 billion dollars in its allocation compared to 2026.
Another key point of Mullin’s appearance on Tuesday came when he was asked in the Senate about the migrant detained in Maryland and wrongly expelled to El Salvador last year, whose case became a symbol of the brutality of Trump’s immigration policy in the early stages of his second presidency.
Mullin, who admitted not knowing about the case, let it slip that he could send him to Costa Rica, the country that the Salvadoran has chosen as his destination. Abrego García is fighting his deportation to a third country in court, given the impossibility of sending him back to El Salvador, where he would suffer persecution and retaliation by the gangs. The Salvadoran has been in conflict with the Trump Administration, which insisted on sending him to Liberia and refused to let the destination be Costa Rica, the only country that he has accepted and offered him asylum.
“If he’s willing, we’ll be happy to send him,” Mullin said, in response to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who has been doggedly involved in the Abrego García case. It is not clear if the words of the new Secretary of Homeland Security indicate a change in the criteria of his department, nor if this deportation will become a reality soon, but his lawyers took advantage of the video with Mullin’s statements to present it to Maryland Judge Paula Xinis, who is handling the case.
Mullin’s appearance comes as the Senate prepares to vote on an additional $70 billion budget for immigration agencies. Republicans presented the vote this Wednesday after several weeks of delay due to disagreements with . The proposal has been withdrawn and Republican senators will vote, possibly tonight, on new funding for ICE without Democratic support.
