Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin says he is drawing up plans to stop international flights from landing in Democrat-run “sanctuary cities” just two weeks before the U.S. co-hosts the FIFA World Cup.
Mullin, 48, the former plumbing company owner who took over the department from Kristi Noem, 54, in March, says he is considering pulling Customs and Border Protection officers out of airports in cities that won’t help Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Under such a plan, the federal government could remove staff who process passport control, preventing any airport concerned from accepting international arrivals.
The plan would be payback for cities that block ICE while still leaning on Washington to run their airports, the DHS chief told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview on Tuesday.
“We’re currently drawing up plans,” Mullin told Hannity, insisting “we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities” while “radical left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws.”
The current flashpoint is Newark, New Jersey, where demonstrators have hemmed in the Delaney Hall detention center and, Mullin grumbled, local police won’t shield his agents going in and out.
It is not the first time Mullin has reached for this threat.
He first floated it in April, in the middle of a battle with Dems over his department’s funding, telling Fox News: “If they’re a sanctuary city, and they’re receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport they’re not going to enforce immigration policy, maybe we need to have a really hard look at that because we need a focus on cities that want to work with us.”
He then repeated it privately to travel bosses last week, the Associated Press reported, a warning that the U.S. Travel Association is taking seriously. “U.S. Travel believes such a move would have devastating consequences for the travel industry and communities that depend on international visitation,” the group said in a statement last Friday.
The reach and implications of such a move would be vast. The Justice Department’s October 2025 roster of sanctuary areas takes in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Newark, Seattle, San Francisco, and Denver—home to many of the nation’s busiest international gateways. Last year, more than 50 million overseas travelers passed through New York’s three main airports.
Social media users pointed out the clear issues with the proposal. “There’s a World Cup around the corner & a high-ranking Cabinet official muses about closing most major US airports,” legal scholar Nora Demleitner posted on Bluesky, reposting a warning that the move would shut down essentially every major international airport in the U.S. that’s not in Florida or Texas.
“Enjoy the lawsuits that will ensue if you ever tried!” one X user wrote, while another sarcastically cheered shuttering the airports as “excellent for the economy.”
Even Mullin’s own side is twitchy. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, 54, has said the idea makes no sense to him.
“We have people from around the world and around the country that need to be able to fly into all different kinds of places. We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics,” he told a congressional hearing last week.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Homeland Security and the White House for comment.
