Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been on the job for just four months — and he is reportedly already stepping on toes inside President Donald Trump’s White House.
Tensions between Mullin and senior administration officials have been building after a string of policy disputes, public missteps and concerns surrounding his preferred candidate to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, NBC News reported Thursday.
The first major collision reportedly came when Mullin ordered ICE to temporarily halt most vehicle stops following fatal shootings involving immigration agents in Houston, Texas, and Biddeford, Maine.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Mullin and acting ICE Director Dave Venturella made the call without first briefing Trump. News of the pause began leaking before the president could be informed, leaving him caught off guard. The Wall Street Journal and ABC News separately confirmed that Mullin directed the suspension.
Trump wasted little time reversing it.
“We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” the president wrote on Truth Social.
The episode apparently did not sit well inside the West Wing.
“Every Cabinet secretary knows that they have to come to the White House for major policy decisions,” a senior administration official told NBC News. “The president sees, hears, reads everything.”
Mullin also reportedly irritated officials with a recent CNN interview concerning the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the administration to move forward with ending Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria.
The secretary suggested that hundreds of thousands of affected immigrants could apply for another legal status. They could not automatically do so under the ruling, according to NBC News, which described Mullin’s remarks as a misstatement that “annoyed” some administration officials.
The Supreme Court ruled on June 25 that lower courts could not continue postponing the administration’s termination of the two countries’ TPS designations while litigation moved forward.
Another potential fault line involves Richard “Lance” Schroyer, Trump’s nominee to lead ICE.
Schroyer, a former Marine and Oklahoma Highway Patrol veteran, is a longtime Mullin ally whom the secretary previously called “a good friend of mine.” Mullin brought Schroyer into DHS to advise local law enforcement agencies participating in a federal immigration enforcement program before Trump nominated him for the top ICE post in June.
But the nomination has reportedly drawn resistance from officials who question whether Schroyer possesses enough federal management experience to run the agency spearheading Trump’s deportation campaign.
Trump border czar Tom Homan was among those who objected to the selection, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“Homan and others aren’t particularly thrilled with him,” the administration official told NBC News.
The White House publicly played down any suggestion of a widening rift, insisting Mullin remains committed to carrying out Trump’s immigration agenda.
“Secretary Mullin is working hard to implement the President’s immigration enforcement agenda,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. “Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Mullin, the border is totally secure, dangerous illegal immigrants are being deported, and Americans are safer.”
“Secretary Mullin will continue to enforce federal immigration law as effectively as possible,” she added.
Trump selected Mullin to replace Kristi Noem, and the former Oklahoma senator was sworn in on March 24 after receiving bipartisan Senate confirmation.
During his confirmation process, Mullin said his goal was to keep DHS from dominating the daily news cycle.
“My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day,” he told senators.
Four months later, the reported turbulence inside Trump’s team is threatening to make that promise harder to keep.
