Earlier this week, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared on Fox News to again float the idea of blocking international arrivals at airports in so-called sanctuary cities like San Francisco. His plan would involve shutting down Customs and Border Protection checkpoints at airports like SFO, making the processing of inbound international travelers impossible.
Mullin's remarks came in response to a heated weekend of protests headlined by New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim being pepper sprayed in front of the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in Newark. As reported by The Hill, Mullin's response was to hop on Fox News on Tuesday and threaten to bring Newark and other sanctuary cities' incoming international travel to a halt.
“They’re barricading our employees from coming in and out of the facility," Mullin asserted. "Then, why are we processing international flights into the airport there? And I, we are currently — which we’re not initiating yet — but we’re currently drawing up plans to say, listen, these sanctuary cities where the local radical-left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our jobs and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either. Because they don’t want us to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities. Nothing about that makes sense to me.”
Mullin did not elaborate on how making such an unprecedented move at precisely the moment when massive travel related to June's FIFA World Cup is getting underway would, by contrast, make sense. Should this threat be put into action, SFGATE reports that up to a dozen major airports — including SFO and LAX — could be affected. This list includes "four of the 10 busiest airports in the country (O’Hare, Denver, LAX and John F. Kennedy)".
Ignoring the potential chaos and costs associated with prohibiting sanctuary city airports from accepting incoming international travelers, Reuters notes that should Mullin proceed with his plan, "it would almost certainly face immediate legal challenges."
Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images
