Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has a plan to punish cities that don’t enforce federal immigration policies
The travel industry is “on edge” with worries that Mullin’s comments could “jeopardize international flights,” said The Associated Press. Major airlines “quickly condemned the idea,” and “even Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it doesn’t make sense to him.” The government “shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics,” said Duffy at a congressional hearing last month. Duffy also said he would “like to learn more about the context” of the proposal and “maybe ask Mullin a question about what he meant,” the AP said.
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The Justice Department last month published a list of states and cities it claimed were “impeding U.S. immigration policies,” said CNBC. Among the locales listed were “major international air hubs” including Boston, Newark, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Mullin is “pushing forward” with his plan despite concerns, said The Atlantic. Last month he convened a “small group of airline and travel-industry executives at DHS headquarters in Washington” and reportedly discussed reductions in CBP staffing at “major airports that serve sanctuary jurisdictions,” such as JFK in New York and Dulles in Washington, D.C. The secretary’s plans seemed to “reflect a thin grasp of global-travel logistics” and displayed an “inflated sense of the government’s ability to impose economic pain on specific cities.”
It’s “not clear” how Mullin’s goal to block international travel to certain cities would “work in practice,” said Time. The proposal is “actively insane,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, on X. Airlines would be forced to “cancel flights en masse,” which would cause “enormous economic damage” that extends “waaaaay beyond a few big cities that were the target.” It is also unlikely that officials in Democrat-run communities will be willing to “overhaul their approach to immigration policy” simply to “prevent Mullin from sabotaging many of the busiest airports in the Western Hemisphere,” said MS NOW.
Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.