Mullin clashes with DeLauro over Trump immigration policies, child separations
Mullin and DeLauro clashed over child separations as the Homeland Security budget hearing turned into a fight over Trump-era enforcement. Lawmakers also pressed for clarity on migrant children and oversight data.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin turned a budget hearing into a sharp fight with Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro over immigration enforcement, family separation and the treatment of migrant children. The exchange came June 25 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., and C-SPAN described it as heated.
DeLauro pressed Mullin on the Trump administration’s handling of children during detention and deportation proceedings, putting child separation back at the center of the budget conversation. Mullin answered by accusing her of hypocrisy, saying she had not spoken up when migrant children were unaccounted for during the Biden administration. The clash laid bare the unresolved political dispute over how far immigration enforcement can go before it crosses into harm for children and families.
The hearing did not come out of nowhere. House Appropriations Democrats had already scheduled an oversight session for May 18, 2026, with Mullin listed as the witness, before postponing it. The Democrats’ hearing page still identifies him as the department’s witness, underscoring how central the secretary has become to the committee’s oversight of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Mullin had also testified June 3 before the House Committee on Homeland Security on DHS’s fiscal 2027 budget request. In that testimony, he said the plan calls for $118.4 billion in total DHS funding, including $63.0 billion in net discretionary funding, and urged Congress to keep sustained money flowing to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol. He said DHS employs more than 275,000 people and framed the budget as a way to strengthen border security, immigration enforcement, TSA modernization and disaster preparedness.
That budget backdrop made the DeLauro exchange more than a personal confrontation. It became a test of how the department intends to defend aggressive immigration enforcement while lawmakers demand specifics on what is happening to children, what oversight exists, and where the administration is still refusing to give a full accounting.
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