Markwayne Mullin wants America’s state leaders to know he’s operating the Department of Homeland Security differently from former Secretary Kristi Noem.
During the National Governors Association’s annual gathering last week, Mullin sat in his home state of Oklahoma with its Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt for a discussion on federal and state law enforcement collaboration.
Mullin stated that successful cooperation during the 2026 FIFA World Cup — equivalent to 78 Super Bowls in just over a month, with no major security incidents — demonstrates that bipartisan efforts can be effective.
“Even the mayors that typically want to go out and bash ICE, governors that want to go out there and hit DHS,” he said, “none of that happened during our FanFest, none of it happened during FIFA. ... We cooperated during FIFA and we proved that we could do something great.”
During the FIFA events, Mullin reported collaborative enforcement efforts that resulted in the confiscation of over 400,000 counterfeit items, sting operations rescuing more than 270 women and underage girls from human trafficking, and the arrest of more than 400 suspects. Authorities also seized over 700 drones and neutralized over 2,000 drones.
Mullin: Getting the worst of the worst
Mullin described how to implement this collaboration effectively for immigration enforcement.
“I have the greatest mission, period, to protect our homeland. And I think every governor in this room has that same mindset,” Mullin said during Saturday’s conference. “We can all do our job to protect our backyards. But I can’t do it without cooperation from everybody.”
He used New York City, a sanctuary city whose leadership has made it very clear that it will not uphold federal immigration laws of the Trump administration, as an example of what is happening without such enforcement.
Mullin said that DHS currently has 15,000 retainers — also called immigration detainers — on individuals in New York City alone who have been convicted of crimes and are about to be released back into the public.
None of those retainers have been honored, he said.
In New York state as a whole, Mullin said the federal government has an additional 27,000 retainers out that represent 41,000 crimes.
“Now, a retainer means that they don’t have a status to be in the country anymore,” he explained, “these aren’t individuals that are that that are here on a work visa. These are individuals that were here because they came in illegally or they’ve overstayed.”
He continued, “If we could just get those individuals just in New York City, we’ll remove almost 40,000 criminals off the streets that were going to be released. That’s just one state.”
DHS has 110,000 retainers on individuals that have not been honored by state leadership in the top 10 states that are not cooperating with federal law enforcement, Mullin said.
“Now, that shouldn’t be controversial. We’re not doing job site raids. We’re not going to Home Depot and raiding the parking lot. These are individuals that have already been convicted of a crime.”
But when federal law enforcement isn’t allowed to arrest the individuals while they’re incarcerated, they are left to arrest them in public, “which could cause more problems and put our officers at risk, the public at risk, and the person that we’re serving the retainer at risk.”
“Let’s work to get the worst of the worst off the streets, and then you won’t see me in your cities and states like you do as much because my presence won’t be as big. In fact, you probably won’t even see us at all,” Mullin said.
Governor-led bipartisan immigration task force
In a nationwide, bipartisan effort, Stitt, former chair of the National Governors Association, established an immigration task force with the newly elected chair, Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Wes Moore.
The immigration task force will be co-chaired by Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and Delaware Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer, with the goal of developing bipartisan immigration reform proposals at a time when partisan gridlock has largely stalled action in Congress.
“For 40 years we’ve been trying to do immigration reform and nobody’s ever been able to get it done. Congress has not been able to move,” Cox said in an interview with Bloomberg over the weekend. “We were together in February and having a conversation about immigration, and we were all shocked at the level of bipartisanship cooperation and agreement. We were really stunned that everybody had kind of the same opinions on what needed to be done.”
Cox added, “We’re doing this not necessarily just out of the goodness of our hearts. We’re here because it’s our job. Because with what we’re seeing in workforce, what we’re seeing in public safety, we feel like there is an imperative where we must, as a nation, as Americans, find a way to come together, Democrats, Republicans with very different constituencies and come up with policies to suggest to Washington to really move the country forward and beyond where we’ve been for the past few years.”