Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin won’t say whether he briefed President Donald Trump before briefly pausing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) traffic stops in the wake of two recent fatal shootings.
During a Friday briefing on the department’s efforts to clean up the voter rolls of noncitizens, Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan asked Mullin to clarify if he informed Trump before suspending ICE traffic stops.
“The president and I are very close. I was texting with him this morning,” Mullin said. “There’s no daylight between us and the enforcement. In fact, we have ramped up our enforcement in our arresting illegals.”
Mullin then redirected the conversation to arrest and deportation data.
“Our arrests are up, we’re hitting single-day records every single day, but what we’ve done is I’ve turned down the temperature of the stove to try to get it correct without boiling over,” he said.
The decision to pause vehicle stops followed two recent fatal shootings of migrants by ICE officers trying to pull over vehicles in Houston and Biddeford, Maine. In the Houston case, ICE said Mexican illegal immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo “attempted to evade arrest” and “rammed” an ICE vehicle before he “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”
In the Biddeford shooting, which occurred last week, an ICE officer fatally shot a Colombian man who “attempted to flee the scene” of a traffic stop, the agency said.
The morning after vehicle stops were paused, Trump posted on Truth Social that he opposed the change and viewed it as capitulating to criminals and anti-ICE Democrats.
“The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted,” the president said. “Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job,” he said. “Keep those Crime Stat Records coming! Remember, you are loved and respected in America.”
ICE sources also questioned whether Mullin informed Trump before enacting the pause.
“Not sure how they don’t consult Trump about this before they send out guidance to every field office,” one agency source said.
White House border czar Tom Homan on Tuesday credited Mullin with deciding to cease the tactic, emphasizing that it was a “temporary” measure, not “a policy change.”
ICE officers across the country received orders to resume vehicle stops on Thursday, with some new changes, including a requirement that at least one agent on the team have a body camera, sources said. There is concern within ICE that not all officers have received body cameras, making it impossible to resume traffic stops in some parts of the country.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the concerns during her Thursday briefing, saying all ICE body cameras will be distributed within the next 60 days.
“It’s been a slower rollout than we would have hoped, but that’s because [of] the Democrats’ decision to shut down DHS for several weeks. So, we expect to fully execute on the promise of body cams to all field offices across the country very soon,” she said.
