Mullin Defends ICE Arrests, Rips GOP Rep's Claim
Mullin Defends ICE Arrests, Rips GOP Rep's Claim
The News
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended ICE's arrest numbers on Friday after a Republican congresswoman said the agency has gone too far in detaining people with no criminal records.
Mullin's answer, in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash: "Every one of them was a criminal."
Rep. Maria Salazar, a Florida Republican, has been running an ad citing data she says shows half of the roughly 5,000 people ICE detained in July had no criminal record.
Timeline
Salazar says about 5,000 people were detained that month, and that half of them had no criminal record. She attributes the figures to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Bash confronts Mullin with Salazar's ad and her claim that ICE has "gone too far" by arresting non-criminals. Mullin rejects it, arguing that crossing the border illegally is itself a crime, and denies that any White House quota is driving arrest totals.
Reactions
Mullin held the line that the enforcement numbers are clean, telling Bash "every one of them was a criminal" and taking a swipe at Salazar's concerns about mass deportation, according to Politico.
Salazar, who represents a majority-Hispanic district in Florida, has argued that Hispanic voters who backed the president in 2024 feel betrayed by the way enforcement is being carried out.
Coverage split hard along the usual lines. The Gateway Pundit framed the exchange as Mullin "schooling" Bash over the ad. Mediaite described it as Bash directly confronting Mullin with a Republican lawmaker's accusation that the department is going after non-criminals.
What's Next
Salazar's ad keeps the intra-party fight on the record heading into upcoming congressional sessions. Unresolved: the full underlying FOIA figures behind her 50% claim, and whether other Republicans in heavily Hispanic districts follow her lead in breaking with the administration publicly.
More
The dispute is less about the arrest count than about the definition. Mullin's position is that illegal entry makes a person a criminal, full stop. Salazar's framing treats immigration violations as a separate category from criminal convictions — which is why the same detention data can be read two opposite ways.
Poll
Should illegal entry alone count as a criminal record for ICE enforcement purposes?
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