Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, staunchly defended the president’s immigration crackdown and vowed to keep up the arrest rate on Friday, days after two fatal shootings by federal officers drew public backlash.
“We’re turning up the heat on the streets,” Mr. Mullin told reporters at a news conference focused on election security. “We’re out there working harder than we ever have.”
Mr. Mullin made clear that he and President Trump were on the same page and that he would seek to deliver on his boss’s promise of mass deportations. The display of loyalty came after Mr. Trump publicly demanded that immigration officers continue to stop vehicles as part of enforcement, just a day after the Homeland Security Department halted the practice in response to the two recent shootings in Texas and Maine.
“The president and I are very close,” Mr. Mullin said. “There’s no daylight between us and the enforcement.”
Mr. Mullin declined to answer questions about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who fatally shot one person in Houston and another in Biddeford, Maine, during traffic stops in the span of one week. Those shootings came amid a recent surge in immigration arrests across the country.
Asked about an Associated Press article identifying a man as the ICE officer involved in the Maine shooting and reporting a history of violent behavior, Mr. Mullin said he had “not heard that at all.” The New York Times has not confirmed that the officer identified in the article was responsible for the shooting.
“We’ll allow the investigation to go through,” Mr. Mullin said. “That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
Mr. Mullin also declined to say whether the immigration officers involved in the Maine and Houston shootings were on administrative leave.
Mr. Mullin underscored that the agency was deporting people at a faster rate this year compared with last year, which data through April confirms. He also emphasized that the department was hitting “single-day records” every day.
Late last month, federal immigration arrests began climbing amid pressure from the White House to increase arrests. Officials detained more than 10,000 people in five days, and were told there was a new standard of 2,000 arrests a day, roughly double the rate of earlier this year.
Albert Sun contributed reporting.
