Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Monday suggested his department would take a "hard look" at customs operations at airports in cities with sanctuary policies.
In an interview with Fox News, Mullin said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is determining whether customs enforcement operations could continue at international airports in those cities.
"If they're a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city?" Mullin asked during the evening interview, his first as homeland security secretary since he was confirmed last month.
Sanctuary city policies refer to rules or laws that prohibit or limit local law enforcement cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal immigration officials. Some of those policies can block federal officials from using city resources, personnel, or buildings.
"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," Mullin said.
Fox News' Bret Baier asked Mullin whether those airports would see restrictions on Customs and Border Protection (CBP) services.
“We’re going to have to start prioritizing things at some point,” Mullin said. “Right now, remember, the Democrats are wanting to defund Customs and Border Patrol. Well, who processes those individuals when they walk off the plane? And so I’m going to have to be forced to make hard decisions.”
Mullin added that he won't be "going outside the policies that Congress passed for me, and we're not trying to push those, but we're saying you've got to partner with us."
Sanctuary city policies may put those cities at risk of not receiving DHS resources, he said.
"I believe sanctuary cities are not lawful," Mullin said. "I don't think they're able to do that. And so, we're going to take a hard look at this."
Federal funding for DHS lapsed in mid-February after Democratic lawmakers indicated they would not vote to fund the department, over concerns about ICE and CBP policies in the wake of two high-profile shooting deaths in Minneapolis earlier this year.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Sunday told ABC News that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) should bring back the House from recess to vote on funding DHS, saying that it has created "chaos at airports all across the country and forcing people, including what happened to TSA agents for weeks, to work without pay."
Before the recess, senators worked on a measure to fund much of DHS, but not CBP and ICE. Jeffries said the House should be called back into session to vote on it.
“There is a bipartisan bill that has been sent over from the Senate, not once, but twice," he said in the interview.
The Senate last month confirmed Mullin, a senator from Oklahoma, to lead DHS after Trump announced that then-Secretary Kristi Noem would be stepping down from the role to lead a newly created position.
Democrats say that ICE and CBP need overhauls that include agents wearing body cameras and a restriction on agents wearing face masks during immigration enforcement operations, among other proposals.