By Ted Hesson and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, March 23(Reuters) – The U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee for Homeland Security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, to replace outgoing Kristi Noem, heralding a shift in leadership as public support for Trump’s immigration crackdown has fallen.
The vote count was 54-45.
Mullin, a businessman and former mixed-martial arts fighter, backs Trump’s hardline immigration view but signaled during a confirmation hearing that he would dial back some aggressive immigration policies, including a directive that said federal immigration officers could forcibly enter private homes or businesses without judicial warrants.
Democrats have blocked funding for the 260,000-person Department of Homeland Security since mid-February in a push to scale back Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics. Airport security screeners who have missed paychecks have increasingly been calling out sick, leading to longer lines in U.S. airports.
Senate Republicans repeatedly have rejected a Democratic bill that would have paid Transportation Security Administration workers while negotiations on immigration enforcement practices continued.
The Trump administration began deploying federal immigration officers at airports on Monday to help with screening but the impact remained unclear.
The new leadership at DHS offers the Trump administration a chance to pivot away from Noem, a former governor of South Dakota who put herself at the forefront of Trump’s mass deportation effort.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers sharply criticized Noem at congressional hearings in early March over her remarks painting two U.S. citizens fatally shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis as perpetrators of “domestic terrorism” even as video evidence undercut those claims.
Noem also faced scrutiny at the hearings over a $220 million ad campaign that was awarded to Republican-connected firms without a standard contract bidding process.
Trump fired Noem after the hearings, saying she would depart by March 31 and become special envoy to a new “Shield of the Americas” initiative to promote his security policies in the Western Hemisphere. The Republican president nominated Mullin to replace her, kicking off a scramble to confirm him in the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 advantage.
During a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul, the top Republican on the panel, slammed Mullin for a history of violent rhetoric, including remarks in February condoning an attack on Paul in 2017 that left him with broken ribs and a damaged lung.
While Paul opposed Mullin’s nomination, Democratic Senator John Fetterman, a moderate from Pennsylvania, provided backing that permitted Mullin to advance to a Senate vote.
Public backing for Trump’s immigration policies diminished in recent months as masked federal agents surged to U.S. cities to search for possible immigration offenders.
The Trump administration has signaled it could try to shift its message on the issue. White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair told Republican lawmakers during a closed-door meeting in Florida this month March that they should stop focusing on Trump’s push for mass deportations and instead highlight the arrests of people with criminal records, Axios reported.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump himself has told his inner circle that some mass deportation policies went too far.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda would not change.
“President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” she said.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
