This is not an official government website.
Copyright © 2026 PLEJ LC. All rights reserved.
Congressional Daily Record
This section covers nominations, confirmations, or other executive branch business. It mentions members such as John Cornyn.
Official title: Nomination of Markwayne Mullin (Executive Session)
Issued
March 23, 2026
senate side of the record
People
2
Linked members mentioned in this section
Legislation
0
No linked legislation in this section
Committees
0
No linked committees in this section
Senate Holds
0
No hold activity linked here
Source Document
Connected Data
People mentioned
1 Helpful Term
Executive business
Senate business involving nominations, treaties, and executive branch communications rather than ordinary bills.
Source Control
Reader mode is for comprehension. The linked government PDF is the official published source.
Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. President, today, the Senate will vote on the nomination of our colleague from Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin. If confirmed, he will serve as the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
steamrolled civil rights and violated court orders to carry out Stephen Miller and the President's mass deportation campaign.
Chicago, were terrorized by masked, militarized agents whose presence did not establish the “law and order” that the President promised. Instead, indiscriminate, violent roundups swept up citizens, legal residents, American citizens, people with no serious criminal record, not just the “worst of the worst,” which the President had promised.
occupying paramilitary forces, the so-called ICE agents, simply for exercising their constitutional rights.
the Department of Homeland Security but so, too, will be the lasting pain she inflicted across the country, which still bears the scars left by rogue Federal immigration agents under her watch.
accountability for her actions. I have little hope that Attorney General Pam Bondi's weaponized Department of Justice will pursue that accountability, but the statute of limitations for many of these crimes, including deception before the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath earlier this month, will exceed this President's last day in office.
recommending commonsense measures that are broadly supported by the American people.
the ICE agents and send them to the airports to supplement the TSA? Well, the people with the TSA have said: They are not trained to do our job. They can't read the X ray machines. They are simply law enforcement agents of their own stripe.
wearing masks in the airports of America—thank goodness—so that traveling Americans and visitors to this country will not believe that this kind of justice really represents our country.
commonsense measures to change, but unfortunately, the White House and some of my Republican colleagues have allowed TSA agents and the Coast Guard to go without pay. On 9 or 10 separate occasions in the last several weeks, we have come to the floor of the U.S. Senate—the Democrats—offering to fund the entire Department of Homeland Security but for those two sections, for ICE as well as CBP. We were going to fund the others, which would include TSA agents who missed a paycheck. Each time, a Republican Senator stood up and objected. If they would not object, the payment would be made, and we could catch up with the payroll of these people who are performing these valuable law enforcement functions. The same thing holds true for Coast Guard and FEMA and CISA.
We are not asking for much. Democrats have said repeatedly that in the meantime, we will work with the administration on new standards for ICE that are consistent with law enforcement across the United States.
people on the highway? None of them. So the demand that these ICE Agencies should be treated differently than professional police forces across America just doesn't make sense.
fund the rest of DHS. Senate Republicans blocked us in that effort 10 times, all while the chaos at our airports grows.
brought to him by the majority leader, the Republican leader of the Senate, which would fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except for ICE. President Trump wants Senate Republicans to hold DHS funding hostage until the Senate passes his SAVE America Act.
I will save my speech on that terrible bill for another day.
that he would deploy ICE agents to airports, as I mentioned earlier. That directive caught officials at ICE off guard, and they were forced to scramble to piece together some plan.
This was just a musing of the President's. He announced it, and now they have to try to make it work.
In response, the flight attendants union said:
The introduction of ICE agents into airports creates
contradictory missions, as attempts to question passengers
about immigration status may distract them from ensuring
airport security.
They continued:
There's one solution that immediately solves the problem at
our airports. Pay the people who are already trained to
protect us . . . today.
I support that completely. We have tried 10 times on the floor of the Senate. I hope this week we will try again. The people who are working for TSA deserve it.
Mullin should assume his new role as DHS Secretary. The problems at DHS are larger than any one person, and I remain concerned that my colleagues will not rein in the abuses.
tactics in the President's mass deportation campaign. He has issues with managing his temper—we have seen that—and he has virtually no experience with DHS, a sprawling Agency that employs hundreds of thousands of people.
American citizen who was labeled as a “domestic terrorist” after being brutally shot five times on Kedzie Avenue in Chicago, IL, by a masked border patrol agent. It is an outrage. It is a miracle that she survived. Or Lia, the high school student from North Lawndale High School who has spoken out against immigration raids after her community was tear-gassed and her friends and neighbors were arrested by masked ICE and Border Patrol agents. Lia is an American citizen. I cannot
also voting to install someone who might be another “yes” man who will only enable this President to continue.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Texas.