Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary sparked a furious MAGA revolt by suggesting that hundreds of thousands of migrants could apply to stay in the U.S. permanently.
Markwayne Mullin, 48, took over the role in March, replacing Kristi Noem. The former MMA fighter and plumbing business boss set off the firestorm during a Sunday sit-down on CNN’s State of the Union, where host Jake Tapper pressed him on whether the roughly 350,000 people holding Temporary Protected Status would all be deported.
Mullin replied that they had “a couple choices”—either apply for permanent residence or a visa, or take a plane ticket home plus a stipend to “re-establish” when they got there. He stressed that Temporary Protected Status “was never intended to be permanent,” and that applying was no guarantee of approval. Felons, those with pending charges, and anyone, he said, who had been “living off the taxpayer dollars” would be rejected.
The MAGA base seems not to have heard the caveats.
Fox News veteran Laura Ingraham led the charge against Mullin, posting that permanent status is “not what the base wants” and that “temporary means temporary—time to go home.” Conservative legal activist Mike Davis reposted Ingraham’s message, saying simply: “100%.”
Florida Republican Anthony Sabatini branded the comments an “absolute betrayal of the Republican base—Very disgusting to see,” calling it “America Last / Third World First policy right here.”
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who became the controversial public face of Trump’s immigration crackdown before being pulled from the Minneapolis operation when two U.S. citizens were shot dead by federal agents, went further.
He warned that Republicans risked losing the midterms. “Promising mass deportations won big,” he wrote, before blasting the move as “the old ‘temporary means forever’ filter that got us in this situation to begin with.” His verdict: “Deliver the promise or lose the House.”
Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren warned conservatives might simply “stay home in November.”
One MAGA account, @PatriotWoman22, complained that ICE was “barely breaking 30,000 deportations a month” against a target of more than 30 million, griping that at that rate it would take 83 years to deport everyone.
Another reply urged Trump to “FIRE Markwayne Mullin.”
As the backlash spiraled, Mullin was forced into damage control. “Let me be ABUNDANTLY clear,” he posted on X hours after his CNN sit-down. “Temporary Protected Status is just that: TEMPORARY.”
The secretary accused Democrats of trying to turn TPS into “a defacto amnesty program,” insisting Trump had “put a STOP to it.” Anyone in the country without status, he said, was there illegally—and faced a stark choice. “They can either accept a $2,600 stipend and a flight home to self deport, or they will be removed.”
When Mullin took the reins at DHS, he vowed to keep the sprawling agency out of the headlines. “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day,” he told senators at his confirmation hearing.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
