President Donald Trump's newly-minted secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, has made explosive headlines with his repeated threats on cable news to pull back Customs and Border Protection officers from airports in "sanctuary cities" that don't cooperate with federal immigration agents — a move that would sharply reduce or eliminate the ability of major airports like New York-JFK, LAX, Philadelphia, Boston, and Minneapolis to process international flights.
But it turns out he may have been the only one in the administration pushing for this policy, going rogue without the approval of the White House and other officials.
According to CNN's Alayna Treene, while Mullin has been "obsessed" with this plan ever since he took office, there has been no formal approval for the idea from the White House, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has openly repudiated it, saying at a congressional hearing this month, “We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics.”
Meanwhile, a White House official said of the issue, “The President loves having a team that is constantly coming up with new ideas but ultimately any policy decisions will be up to him.”
While Mullin and some Fox News personalities have suggested international flights could simply be rerouted to airports in red states, experts broadly agree that shutting down international traffic at major gateway airports, even for a brief period, would throw the entire air traffic system, including in red states, into chaos and cause massive economic devastation.
The airline industry itself has warned the plan would be catastrophic, with the lobbying group Airlines for America stating, “Reducing [Customs and Border Protection] staffing at major airports would have a devastating effect on the airline and tourism industries, causing a significant operational disruption to carriers, travelers and the flow of international cargo.”