Markwayne Mullin (successor to disgraced-DHS secretary Kristi Noem) convened a group of travel executives in mid May to get a first look at his new plan: force so-called “sanctuary” “cities” to comply with DHS/ICE‘s “operations” by threatening to reduce customs staff at America’s busiest airports. As Nick Miroff reports in The Atlantic, the scheme greatly alarmed attendees.
Mullin convened a small group of airline and travel-industry executives at DHS headquarters in Washington and told them he may reduce CBP staffing at major airports that serve sanctuary jurisdictions. Mullin told executives the locations could include Portland International Airport, in Oregon; New York City–area airports such as John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport; and Washington Dulles International Airport, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion who were not authorized to speak publicly. Mullin did not indicate when DHS would begin the pullback, but it would likely occur sometime after the United States finishes hosting the World Cup in July, the two people told me.
via Nick Miroff, The Atlantic
Genesis of this hair-brained plan is interesting. Mullin’s “revenge reduction” in CBP staffing was first floated as an “idea” on a Fox (so called) News live-hit soon after he was confirmed; Mullin’s proposal was initially dismissed as a “green” administration operative who had scant understanding of how airport customs works.
Shortly after Markwayne Mullin took over DHS, he floated an idea on Fox News that wasn’t taken seriously; it sounded, in fact, like a proposal from someone very new on the job: Mullin threatened to cut federal screening of international passengers and cargo at airports in cities with ‘sanctuary’ policies, which limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Such a move would trigger flight cancellations to airports in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other major cities and force airlines to reroute to other destinations. Mullin’s proposal seemed more like a wild swing than a real plan.
via Nick Miroff, The Atlantic
The Atlantic‘s Miroff perfectly captures the absurdity and corruption at play here by Mullin, which is, essentially, coercing cities to adopt their preferred (read: brutal) treatment of undocumented migrants.
Mullin’s proposal appears to reflect a thin grasp of global-travel logistics, as well as an inflated sense of the government’s ability to impose economic pain on specific cities, according to industry executives and former DHS officials I spoke with. The U.S. airports where international travelers and cargo first arrive are often not their final destination. A German business traveler flying into JFK may be en route to a meeting in Cincinnati. A Korean family landing at Los Angeles International Airport could be headed for Disney World. The proportion of economic pain imposed on sanctuary cities might be relatively small compared with the wider ripple effects on the U.S. travel industry.
via Nick Miroff, The Atlantic
Trump has been caterwauling about sanctuary cities for at least a decade, including a lie-filled screed at CPAC (given in front of a Nazi symbol, naturally) and an Executive Order restricting funds. But perhaps the most-shocking (and least-covered by U.S. news media) is how DOJ dismantled its entire tax-enforcement division and attempted to reassign chief tax official David Hubbert to “sanctuary city” enforcement. Rather than accept an involuntary transfer to that division, he resigned.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
U.S. news media won’t characterize the situation bluntly so here goes: Mullin’s lil’ “plan” is a false-rhetoric-powered mafia-squeeze straight out of the Project 2025 playbook. You know, the disgraced manifesto that Donald’s associates hysterically (and nonsensically) tried to “distance” themselves from in 2024—and then, like 5 minutes after the election was called, went full-bore implementing it all.
Notable also are the “layers of untruths” at work here: not only did they continuously lie about direct connections to Heritage Foundation‘s screed throughout the 2024 election, but during Regime 2 they are lying (to judges, the public and each other) about the anti-democratic impacts of using the “right-wing Armageddon” blueprint as their Bible.
Anyhow, Mullin is a showpony just like Noem was. But newly minted Markwayne doesn’t have Noem’s documented, on-the-job baggage (living rent-free in military digs; failing to disclose dark-money income; objectively failing Texans in disaster response) and is, apparently, ready to spend oodles of political capital he does not have.
This particular scheme to attack (their concept of) “sanctuary” “cities” would cause utter chaos for U.S. travel, but then again that could be the overall point here. Past is prologue with mobsters who always re-run the same ops.
At base level, “Sanctuary Cities” is a pejorative phrase with no legal meaning. Read that again.
If I do anything correctly in this lifetime it will be to myth-bust the entire F out of those 2 words, which legacy press has fully laundered into mainstream acceptance. I like to call that phrase “weaponized vagueness,” since, again, it has no heft legally and is being used as a racist cudgel by bad actors currently stinking up “federal” “government.” The “weaponized” part is in fact designed to cast a routine, administrative declination to cooperate as criminal complicity, applied selectively to jurisdictions that are overwhelmingly—if not exclusively—run by Democrats.
Which also lays bare another lie: nobody is “treading on” religious principles (made famous of course by Tea Party‘s performative outrage, funded by Koch Brothers and promoted by Murdoch) but America’s Christian extremists want their belief system codified into law so they—ZOMG!—don’t have to bake cakes for queer folks. In other words, vagueness (and victimhood) is the Right’s stock-in-trade.
If we, after this hellscape ends, redouble efforts to make laws from love and acceptance versus exclusionary hatred we may be able to reclaim our democracy. And next time you see a Beltway reporter mention “sanctuary cities” like it’s legitimate theory, feel free to drop this post in their mentions.
SOURCES
- The Atlantic
- Fox article (archived)
- Public Rights Project
- Media Matters
