Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Tuesday said his department is drawing up plans to suspend customs and immigration processing at international airports in sanctuary cities that are resisting enforcement of President Donald Trump's immigration agenda.
Clashes at Delaney Hall
Mullin's comments followed protests Monday outside Delaney Hall, a privately run immigrant detention center in Newark, where local residents clashed with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. During the confrontation, agents deployed pepper-spray balls that injured Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.).
I visited with the White House today, and I said, if they are going to not allow us to go out and arrest the worst of the worst, and then when we call for assistance at the facilities, that street belongs to the city, Mullin told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
If it belonged to us, we would take care of it, but it belongs to the city, and they are barricading our employees from coming in and out of the facility. Then, why are we processing international flights into the airport there? he added.
Democratic lawmakers' visit
Kim and other Democratic lawmakers visited Delaney Hall over the weekend amid reports of hunger strikes and inhumane conditions inside. The visit prompted protests on Monday, which Kim said he tried to defuse when ICE agents deployed pepper spray and made several arrests.
Mullin claimed Tuesday that DHS requests for assistance from local police were ignored. He told Hannity his department is currently drawing up plans to say that in these sanctuary cities where the local radical left Democrats are not allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we should not be processing international flights into their cities either.
Conditions at detention facilities
The Trump official has claimed there is no hunger strike and no subprime conditions at Delaney, and told Hannity that Homeland Security is not responsible for processing customs or immigration at cities whose residents do not want us to enforce immigration.
Mullin and his department claim conditions at immigrant detention facilities like Delaney Hall are safe and humane, yet ICE detainees appear to be dying by suicide at an alarming rate, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.
Impact on travel and World Cup
Mullin previously provided understaffed airports during the government shutdown with ICE agents while threatening to restrict customs processing in jurisdictions refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. This threat now affects travel for the 2026 World Cup, which is returning to the U.S. this summer for the first time since 1994.
Trump's immigration agenda and its enforcement measures are reportedly dissuading potential visitors from traveling to America for fear of dangerous reprisal. You see the ICE people going around and just pulling people from the streets just because they look foreign, and you do not get the feeling that anybody would protect me, Steve Schwarzbach, a German soccer fan who attended previous World Cups, told CNN.
Kim on Saturday said he and his colleague spoke to dozens, if not a hundred or more Delaney Hall detainees, who are being fed disgusting food and are not getting medical treatment they need, including a pregnant woman, noting he spoke directly to hunger strike participants.
Trump border czar Tom Homan on Tuesday told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that hunger strikes never work and added that if it gets bad enough and the prisoners feel like they are putting themselves in extreme danger, medical danger, then we will force-feed them.
