(Washington) The nomination of Markwayne Mullin as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration was confirmed Monday by the US Senate.
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The current senator from Oklahoma was approved for this position at the heart of numerous controversies in the United States with 54 votes for and 45 votes against.
Markwayne Mullin, 48, will now become head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) even though the latter has been in a situation of budgetary paralysis for more than a month.
The Democratic opposition refuses to approve funding for DHS without major reforms being made to ICE, the immigration police overseen by this department.
Markwayne Mullin’s hearing before a Senate committee was held last week, shortly after the dismissal of Kristi Noem, weakened in particular by the highly criticized anti-immigration operations of recent months in Minneapolis, during which two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by federal agents.
During his hearing, he distanced himself from his own statements regarding Alex Pretti, whom he had described as a “disturbed individual”.
“I shouldn’t have said that, and as secretary, I wouldn’t,” he admitted. “I spoke too quickly. I reacted quickly without knowing the facts. »
On the subject of ICE, criticized for the brutal methods it adopted to carry out the anti-immigration offensive claimed by Donald Trump, the Republican senator spoke of his vision according to which he would like to see this agency “become the means” used to expel migrants rather than being on the “front line” of arresting them across the country.
Markwayne Mullin, who described the US president as a “friend”, set a goal that “within six months, (the DHS) will no longer be in the news every day”.
Donald Trump has made the fight against illegal immigration a top priority, speaking of an “invasion” of the United States by “criminals from abroad” and communicating extensively on expulsions of immigrants.
But its program of mass expulsions has been thwarted or slowed down by multiple court decisions, including from the Supreme Court, which is predominantly conservative, on the grounds that the people targeted should be able to assert their rights.
