Markwayne Mullin Defends ICE After GOP Rep Accuses Department of Going After Non Criminals
CNN’s Dana Bash directly confronted Homeland Security Secretary Markwaye Mullin Friday about a Republican lawmaker’s claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement have “gone too far” with their arrests.
Bash played a clip of Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s (R-FL) campaign ad where she said:
Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50% of the 5,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.
“She’s a Republican representing a district that is majority Hispanic in Florida, sounding the alarm about the policies of the department that you run,” Bash said. “What’s your response?”
Mullin answered that his department works to strictly “enforce our nation’s laws.”
“We don’t pick and choose which laws we enforce. We enforce the immigration policy that Congress passed and obligated Department of Homeland Security to enforce,” Mullin said.
“What [Salazar] is saying, and she’s using numbers that come from your department, that the [department’s] focus is way too much on non-criminals,” Bash said.
“Mr. Secretary, are you aggressively going after even people in the United States without criminal records because you are trying to reach a quota that is being set, a daily quota that’s being set by the White House?” Bash asked.
“I have never talked to anybody at the White House about any quota,” Mullin said.
“Just going back to the the crux of what Republican congresswoman Salazar is saying. She is citing numbers that were FOIA’d,” Bash said, referring to the Freedom of Information Act.
“I will say that’s actually not true,” Mullin said. “Every one of them was criminals because they broke their nation’s laws when they came across our borders illegally.”
“And when you broke the law and you came into this country illegally, you chose to become a criminal at that point, regardless,” Mullin said. “If you consider a criminal being a pedophile or not, a criminal is a criminal.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
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