Markwayne Mullin Clashes With Reporter Over Trump Deportation Push: ‘Should We Not Enforce Laws?’

[u/John3262005]

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/markwayne-mullin-clashes-with-reporter-over-trump-deportation-push-should-we-not-enforce-laws/

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin got into a testy exchange with a reporter who questioned the Trump Administration’s push to deport illegal immigrants, including those she said have “no criminal convictions.”

Mullin scoffed at the journo during a Monday news conference and told her all illegal immigrants have committed a crime.

“Should we not enforce laws?” he asked the female reporter.

“I said earlier… regardless if you’re a criminal or not, if you entered this country and you cheated — you didn’t come in the legal way because there are people who enter this country every single day legally — does that not make you a criminal?” Mullin shouted. “Did you not break the nation’s laws? We don’t pick and choose which law we’re enforcing, we’re going to enforce the law regardless.”

He then asked the reporter if she was “glad” ICE had arrested illegal immigrants who did have a prior criminal record.

“Do you want to live among those criminals?” Mullin continued.

Their back-and-forth comes a few days after The New York Times reported illegal immigrants with “a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than four percent” in July. President Donald Trump made securing the Southern border and deporting illegal immigrants a key aspect of his 2024 presidential campaign, and he recently vented his administration has done such a good job on the issue the public doesn’t seem to remember or care about it now.

“Even my speechwriters, they say, ‘Sir, nobody wants to hear about the border anymore. You’ve done it, it’s an incredible job you’ve done, but nobody wants to hear about it,’” Trump said earlier this month. “I should’ve taken a couple of years to do it.”

Trump said it would’ve been a shrewd political move, since the public often has a “two-week memory” when it comes to accomplishments.

On Tuesday, Mullin scoffed again when the reporter said there had been an “increasing number” of children rounded up by immigration agents, accusing her of warping the truth.

“We’re not targeting children — like you wanna use that. We target the parents,” he said. “If the parents have children and we’re deporting them, we let the parent decide if they want to be deported with their children, or leave it with a trusted, vetted individual that we know aren’t going to traffic the individuals. We do something quite different than the Biden Administration.”