President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security chief trashed Democrat Sen. Patrick Murphy (D-CT), who had claimed that his agency “is breaking the law at scale.”

“I do have an opening statement here, but wow, Senator Murphy, the dangerous claims you made there are flat wrong,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Murphy, in a June 2 afternoon hearing at the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Mullin continued:

We’re doing the job that Congress gave us the authority to do, and our men and women out there every single day is enforcing laws. If you don’t like the laws, you can change them. We’re not choosing which laws we enforce. We’re simply enforcing the law. Period. Full stop.

When you throw out reckless terms and you start referring to our aactions as being dangerous, unconstitutional, and lawless. That’s why our agents’ death threats are up by 8,000 percent.

I know that’s not what you want, but your political theater, that’s what it causes. When you start looking at assaults on our officers, they’re up by 1,300 percent. Senator Murphy, is that what you want? I don’t think it is. I really don’t, but I understand the political theater.

Murphy often elevates the priorities of migrants and their employers above those of ordinary Americans. In February 2024, for example, he told a TV host that “The Democratic strategy for 30 years has failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country.”

In 2024, for example, Murphy pushed a border bill that would have dramatically expanded the inflow of economic migrants via the asylum loophole. That inflow would have enriched Murphy’s donors — but would have cut wages and spiked housing costs for many millions of ordinary Americans.

Mullin jabbed at Murphy’s political ambitions.

“If you have bigger political ambitions, fine, just say it, but don’t do it at the expense of my officers,” Mullin told him, adding:

You haven’t funded my officers [this year, yet] CBP and ICE [officers] have been willing to do the job for free. Why? Because of a reckless administration prior to President Trump coming in and saving America. You had a reckless administration that was destroying America by letting millions of illegals into our country. We’re a nation of laws, and we’re going to enforce those laws.

…

If you don’t want [to fund] Customs and Border Patrol … then be honest with the American people and say “We want open borders.” Don’t sit there and touch stuff that you know yourself isn’t true.