Mullin ‘drawing up plans’ to halt international flight processing in ‘sanctuary cities’

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said late Tuesday he is “drawing up plans” to end the processing of international flights in left-leaning cities, pointing to protests outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey as rationale.

Mullin’s comments follow weekend protests at Delaney Hall in Newark, where Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) was pepper sprayed during an interaction with immigration agents.

The secretary, appearing on Fox News, complained about protests on city streets outside the facility.

“They’re barricading our employees from coming in and out of the facility. Then, why are we processing international flights into the airport there? And I, we are currently — which we’re not initiating yet — but we’re currently drawing up plans to say, listen, these sanctuary cities where the local radical-left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our jobs and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either,” he said.

“Because they don’t want us to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities. Nothing about that makes sense to me.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents process both U.S. and international visitors at the border and on flights.

While Mullin said the agency helps “process immigration,” CBP checks to ensure noncitizens have valid authorization to enter the country. That can include a tourist visa, a work visa or other documents showing they are a permanent resident.

Critics said ending the processing of international flights at various airports would cause chaos at airports across the country, forcing airlines to cancel flights and disrupt travel for left- and right-leaning cities that depend on CBP processing at major hubs.

Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama-era Department of Homeland Security official, said if Mullin moves ahead the plan will have no impact on immigration.

“Of all the bad ideas floated by this Administration, this one ranks,” she wrote on the social platform X.

“It has got to be real; Mullin wouldn’t waste time like this unless it is a serious distraction plan. Planes don’t divert to other airports. The flights will be cancelled, disrupting blue and red voters, impacting the airlines, and having no impact on immigration policy.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called the idea “actively insane.”

“Airlines cannot divert large numbers of international flights from one city to another,” he wrote on X.

“They’d just have to cancel flights en masse, causing enormous economic damage that splashed waaaaay beyond a few big cities that were the target.”