The new DHS secretary wanted a lower-profile agency while carrying out the president’s immigration agenda. Instead, two deadly traffic stops have reopened the fight over ICE tactics, accountability and political control.
Markwayne Mullin promised to keep the Department of Homeland Security out of the headlines. Then came the fatal ICE shootings: two people killed in two U.S. cities in less than a week. The fatal ICE shootings occurred as Mullin was trying to make DHS quieter, and the shootings triggered political fallout over body cameras, protests, the president’s immigration agenda, Mullin’s hard-line base and Mullin’s leadership of DHS.
USA TODAY reported that Mullin, the new DHS secretary, made the pledge at a March 18 Senate confirmation hearing, saying he did not want the agency to be “in the lead story every single day.” Four months later, DHS and ICE are there anyway.
A quiet pledge meets crisis
Mullin’s promise was not to soften the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. It was to make DHS look steadier while carrying it out.
At his confirmation hearing, he framed the goal as competence and public trust. “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day,” Mullin said, according to USA TODAY. “My goal is for people to understand we’re out there, we’re protecting them, and we’re working with them.”
That kind of reset is difficult for any law enforcement agency after a high-profile use of force. It is even harder for DHS, a department now central to President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation push and already under scrutiny for aggressive immigration operations in American cities.
The central tension is simple: Mullin wants the agency to hum quietly, but ICE’s street-level tactics keep producing moments that demand public explanation.
The two traffic stops
The latest crisis began July 7 in Houston, Texas. USA TODAY reported that an ICE officer shot into a van during a traffic stop, killing 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father from Mexico who was starting his workday.
Six days later, on July 13, another ICE officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 25, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. Durán Guerrero was a Colombian father who was authorized to work in the United States, according to the report.
DHS officials have said in both cases that officers feared for their safety and fired their weapons. Protests followed in both cities, and ICE initially halted traffic stops after the shootings.
That pause did not last. Trump reversed the decision a day later, according to USA TODAY, underscoring how quickly operational caution can run into political pressure when immigration enforcement is one of the administration’s defining promises.
Body cameras became the fight
The shootings also exposed a basic accountability question: why were the ICE officers not wearing body cameras?
According to USA TODAY, DHS and some key Republicans blamed Democrats for problems with the rollout. At the same time, the department said it would ensure that all ICE arrest teams had body cameras within 60 days.
That promise may be important going forward, but it does not answer what happened in Houston or Biddeford. Without officer-worn video, public understanding is likely to depend on agency statements, witness accounts, any available local footage and the findings of investigations that may take weeks or months.
For DHS, the body-camera gap is more than a technology issue. It cuts directly against Mullin’s attempt to project discipline. An agency asking the public to trust its judgment in deadly encounters is now explaining why a tool designed to build that trust was not in place.
Mullin chose a hard line
Mullin’s public response leaned into enforcement, not retreat.
In a July 15 statement to USA TODAY, he said DHS’s No. 1 goal is “to keep our officers safe and get criminals OFF our streets.” He added: “Illegal aliens will be arrested and deported wherever they are. If you are here illegally, LEAVE NOW.”
Mullin also said officers are facing increases in vehicle attacks and argued that attempting to evade arrest is dangerous. He blamed “sanctuary politicians” for encouraging resistance to ICE, according to the report.
That message speaks directly to the administration’s enforcement supporters and Mullin’s hard-line base: do not let criticism slow deportations. But it also shows why the agency remains combustible. For critics of ICE tactics, the statement sounded less like a promise of transparency than a defense of the same aggressive posture that has drawn protests.
The deeper DHS problem
The July shootings did not happen in isolation. USA TODAY described a turbulent 2026 for DHS, beginning with immigration operations in the Midwest and widening protests over masked, armed agents on American streets.
In January, an ICE agent in Minneapolis fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother, during a protest while she was inside her vehicle, according to the report. Two weeks later and about a mile away, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents killed another U.S. citizen, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, also during a protest.
Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem initially labeled them domestic terrorists before video evidence contradicted her account, USA TODAY reported. The episode helped fuel public concern over enforcement tactics, with polling showing declining support as operations grew more visible and confrontational.
This is the context Mullin inherited. His pitch was not made to a neutral public watching a quiet agency. It was made after months of images, protests and deadly encounters had already made DHS a symbol of the administration’s immigration crackdown.
Quieter look, same policy
Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, told USA TODAY that DHS has a “single-minded focus on removing people from the country.”
Meissner said the department is receiving historic, “military-level” funding, with DHS and ICE backed by resources larger than some countries’ military budgets. Her critique is that the administration has changed the optics more than the substance.
“They’ve taken a series of actions that have certainly changed the optics,” Meissner said. “I’m not at all persuaded that there’s any change in the policy itself.”
That distinction matters. A quieter DHS can mean fewer splashy operations, fewer viral confrontations and tighter messaging. But if the underlying mission is still maximum enforcement, the quiet can break the moment an arrest team fires a weapon.
The numbers DHS wants judged by
DHS officials argue the agency is delivering on Trump’s promises. Lauren Bis, an acting assistant secretary at DHS, told USA TODAY that the department has worked from day one to arrest and deport migrants suspected of crimes.
“Our border is now closed,” Bis said in a statement cited by the outlet. “For the last twelve months there have been ZERO releases at the border. We will continue to deliver on the President’s promise to make America safe again.”
Bis also said 70% of people are charged or convicted of crimes and that more than 3 million people have been removed. USA TODAY noted that an analysis of federal data makes it unlikely that 3 million people have been removed.
Those claims show the split-screen reality for Mullin. Supporters measure DHS by arrests, removals and border numbers. Opponents measure it by tactics, detention deaths, shootings and whether the agency is accountable when force turns fatal.
What remains unanswered
The immediate unanswered questions are concrete. Will DHS release more evidence from the Houston and Biddeford shootings? How will the body-camera rollout be verified? Who reviews deadly force involving ICE officers, and how much will the public see?
There is also a bigger question for Mullin: can DHS be less visible while doing work designed to be politically unmistakable?
The president’s allies want proof that immigration enforcement is tough and unrelenting. Civil rights advocates, local officials and protesters want limits, transparency and due process. ICE officers say they face real risks in the field. Families of those killed want answers that do not come only from the agency that fired the shots.
Mullin promised a DHS that would not dominate the news every day. The past week showed how fragile that promise is. When immigration enforcement moves from policy to pavement, the headlines are no longer something a secretary can simply manage away.
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