DHS Is ‘Drawing Up Plans’ To Punish Sanctuary Cities With Major Airport Move

The Trump administration is making plans to pull Customs officers from international airports as a punishment for sanctuary cities that refuse to play ball with federal immigration authorities.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin revealed on “Hannity” Tuesday night that officials are “currently drawing up plans” to stop the processing of international travelers into sanctuary airports. The latest update on the proposed action comes amid a days-long anti-ICE protest taking place outside a federal immigration detention center in Newark.

Several Democrats, including New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, have joined protesters outside the Delaney Hall detention center, where agitators have clashed with federal authorities. Some demonstrators have attempted to block entrances to the facility as local police refused to respond, Mullin said.

Authorities arrested some of the rioters Tuesday night for allegedly assaulting, resisting, and impeding federal officers, according to DHS.

Earlier Tuesday, Mullin met with White House officials to discuss his potential airport action, he said.

“I said If they’re going to not allow us to go out and arrest the worst of the worst and then when we call for assistance at the facilities that the street it belongs to the city, if it belonged to us we would take care of it, but it belongs to the city and they’re barricading our employees from coming in and out of the facility, then why are we processing international flights into the airport there?” Mullin said.

“We are currently — which we are not initiating yet — but we are currently drawing up plans to say listen, in these sanctuary cities, where the local radical left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our job 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,” he added.

Mullin first teased the proposal in April as a way to force sanctuary cities to cooperate with federal immigration agents.

“I believe sanctuary cities is not lawful,” Mullin told Fox News’ Bret Baier at the time. “I don’t think they’re able to do that, and so we’re gonna take a hard look at this.”

“If they’re sanctuary cities, should they really be processing Customs into their city?” Mullin asked. “If they’re a sanctuary city and they’re receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport they’re not gonna enforce immigration policy, maybe we need to have a really hard look at that because we need to focus on cities that want to work with us.”

Mullin says DHS is “drawing up plans” to stop Customs processing from international airports in sanctuary cities pic.twitter.com/MYuywR6vZL

— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) May 27, 2026

The potential move comes just weeks ahead of the FIFA World Cup, which is expected to draw millions of foreign travelers to the United States.