Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has moved fast. In little more than two weeks since replacing Kristi Noem, he has floated cutting customs screening at major international airports in sanctuary jurisdictions, worked to resolve unpaid wages for roughly 100,000 TSA employees, halted a questionable ICE warehouse deal, and taken aim at what he calls reckless Democratic obstruction of homeland security funding.
The sanctuary-airport proposal alone marks a sharp escalation. Mullin told reporters during a recent visit to North Carolina that pulling back customs processing from airports in cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement is on the table, though no final decision has been made.
As Newsmax reported, Mullin framed the logic plainly:
"If cities are going to sit there and say that they're not going to enforce immigration policies, then I'll repeat myself and say it doesn't make any sense for us to process international travelers through that city."
He confirmed the idea with a two-word answer when pressed: "It's an option."
The proposal fits inside a broader Trump administration campaign to force sanctuary jurisdictions into compliance with federal immigration law. Courts have repeatedly blocked earlier attempts to punish sanctuary cities, particularly efforts to withhold federal funding, calling those actions unconstitutional. That legal history makes the airport-screening angle notable: rather than pulling grant money, Mullin is exploring whether to redirect federal personnel and services away from jurisdictions that won't cooperate.
It is a creative pressure point. International travelers arriving at a major hub expect customs and border processing. If DHS scales that back, the economic and logistical consequences for a sanctuary city's airport could be severe, without the administration needing to touch a single federal grant.
The administration has already tried naming and shaming. Under Noem's tenure, DHS published a list of roughly 500 jurisdictions it identified as noncompliant with President Trump's executive order on sanctuary policies. The Washington Examiner reported that DHS then pulled the public list offline within days, even as Noem insisted the department still maintained it and that jurisdictions on it could lose federal grants and contracts.
The rollout drew immediate pushback. The National Sheriffs' Association objected that DHS had not consulted local law enforcement before publishing the list, calling it a breach of trust. Sheriff Kieran Donahue, the association's president, criticized what he described as a lack of transparency and accountability in how the list was assembled.
Noem was unapologetic. As Newsmax previously reported, she pushed back on cities that disputed their designation:
"Some of the cities have pushed back. They think because they don't have one law or another on the books that they don't qualify, but they do qualify. They are giving sanctuary to criminals."
That fight has not gone away. It has simply gained a new secretary willing to try different tools. And the legal landscape remains a live question, a federal statute already criminalizes sanctuary obstruction, yet the Department of Justice has been slow to use it.
Mullin inherited a DHS funding crisis that had stretched into the longest shutdown in the department's history. The most visible casualty: roughly 100,000 Transportation Security Administration employees who had gone weeks without pay while politicians in Washington argued over spending.
The new secretary moved to fix it. He told CBS News that the administration used executive authority to ensure workers were compensated, and offered a specific timeline.
"We expect most of those checks to be in their banks by Friday."
That is the kind of concrete, fast action that matters to the frontline workers who screen bags and passengers every day, people who had been caught in the crossfire of a budget standoff they had no part in creating.
Mullin placed blame squarely on Democrats, accusing them of allowing the shutdown to drag on at the expense of national security. His language was pointed:
"They're willing to defund and shut down 22 agencies that are tasked to keep the homeland safe."
The accusation carries weight. Whatever policy disagreements exist between the parties, the men and women staffing airport checkpoints, patrolling borders, and responding to disasters should not be the ones paying the price. Mullin's decision to use executive authority to get those paychecks out, rather than wait for Congress to sort itself out, was a practical move that put workers ahead of politics.
The broader DHS funding standoff has also played into recent Senate clashes over sanctuary city provisions in spending legislation, where lawmakers have struggled to reconcile enforcement priorities with budget deadlines.
Beyond the headline moves, Mullin has begun a systematic review of how DHS spends taxpayer money. One early result: he halted plans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to purchase warehouses for use as detention facilities after reports surfaced of excessive costs.
The details of those cost reports remain unclear, but the instinct is sound. A new cabinet secretary who walks in and starts asking hard questions about procurement before signing off on large purchases is doing exactly what taxpayers should expect. ICE needs adequate detention capacity, that is not in dispute. But paying too much for it wastes money that could go toward actual enforcement.
Mullin is also reevaluating the use of DHS-owned aircraft for deportation flights as part of a broader cost-benefit analysis. The question is whether the department's own fleet is the most efficient way to move illegal immigrants out of the country, or whether other arrangements would stretch the budget further.
The administration's approach to sanctuary city airport enforcement has drawn attention precisely because it signals a willingness to use operational leverage, not just legal threats, to change the behavior of noncompliant jurisdictions.
During his recent visit to North Carolina, Mullin approved additional funding for hurricane recovery, a move that signals attention to communities still rebuilding. He also used the trip to make a broader argument about how the federal government handles disasters.
His position is that states and local governments are better equipped to lead disaster response than the federal bureaucracy. He laid out the case in plain terms:
"The state is much more equipped. Neighbors are much more equipped. Local mayors are much more equipped. Emergency response from the states have much better equipment than FEMA."
That argument will draw pushback from those who see FEMA as indispensable. But anyone who watched the agency's performance during recent hurricane seasons, the delays, the bureaucratic tangles, the disconnect between Washington and the communities actually digging out, knows Mullin has a point. The people closest to a disaster almost always respond faster and more effectively than a federal agency coordinating from hundreds of miles away.
Mullin is not calling for FEMA's elimination. He is calling for a rebalancing, one that trusts governors, mayors, and local emergency managers to lead, with federal support behind them rather than on top of them.
The broader reshuffling inside the administration has extended beyond DHS. Readers following internal White House personnel decisions may note that similar evaluations are underway at other agencies, reflecting a pattern of demanding accountability across the executive branch.
Several questions hang over Mullin's early moves. Which specific sanctuary cities and airports are under consideration for reduced customs screening? The secretary has not named them. What were the exact excessive costs that prompted the ICE warehouse halt? Those reports have not been detailed publicly. How much additional hurricane recovery funding was approved in North Carolina, and for which communities? That figure has not been disclosed.
And the biggest question of all: will the sanctuary-airport proposal survive legal challenge? Courts have blocked previous attempts to punish sanctuary jurisdictions. Redirecting customs personnel is a different mechanism than withholding grants, but it will almost certainly face litigation the moment it moves from option to action.
Mullin appears to understand that. He described it as "an option", not a done deal. But the fact that it is on the table at all tells sanctuary city leaders something they should take seriously: this administration is not running out of ideas for making noncompliance uncomfortable.
Two weeks in, Mullin has paid workers, questioned spending, proposed real consequences for sanctuary defiance, and pushed disaster response closer to the people who actually live through disasters. Whether every initiative survives the courts or Congress, the direction is clear, and overdue.
