‘Is There a Question in That?’ DHS Sec Mullin Battles CNN’s Jake Tapper in Tense Debate Over Haiti Deportations

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin battled CNN’s Jake Tapper, Sunday, over deportations of Haitians with temporary protected status.

In a tense debate on CNN’s State of the Union, Tapper quizzed Mullin about the Supreme Court’s ruling which gave President Donald Trump’s administration the authority to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for roughly 330,000 immigrants from Haiti.

“Will you be deporting all of them?” Tapper asked Mullin. “Will they be all deported back to their home countries, Haiti and Syria? And when will these deportations start? Will it be immediately?”

“Well, Jake, first of all, Temporary Protected Status was never intended to be permanent,” Mullin said. “And there’s a lot of people that came over here 15, 20 years ago underneath TPS that’s already changed their status.The whole time these individuals have been here underneath the Temporary Protected Status, they could have applied for a visa. They could have applied for LPR. They could have applied for different directions. But the status itself can be ended in its name itself by saying temporary.”

Tapper proceeded to question Mullin on whether it is truly safe to send those with TPS back to Haiti.

“The Trump administration’s argument is that this was only supposed to last 18 months,” Tapper said. “My understanding of how the process works is, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has the discretion to extend it if the U.S. State Department says that the countries that these people are from are still considered unsafe, which is why they were afforded TPS status to begin with. Is it the position of the Trump administration that Haiti is a safe country to send these people to?”

“Well, we take a lot of things in consideration,” Mullin said. “Secretary Rubio, the president and I have had multiple conversations about this, obviously… The qualification isn’t quite just that simple. And keep in mind, a lot of these individuals haven’t been here 18 months. They have been here 18 years. Some of them have been here 20 years, 30 years. They have had plenty of time to reestablish their status inside the United States. They have just chose not to. Then there’s some that has been here the underneath the Biden administration that took advantage of an open border. And those individuals didn’t really come over here because they needed protective status. They came over here because they were taking advantage of a weak leadership. So what we want, and the president has made this very clear, those that are coming to this country legally, they need to be able to contribute to the United States, not be a burden on the taxpayers. And so we are continuing looking at our Temporary Protected Status. Those individuals that do need assistance because of the country they’re in, we’re always looking at them. There isn’t a more generous country in the world than the United States, but we don’t want people to take advantage of it.”

The CNN anchor followed up.

“But do you maintain that it is safe in Haiti to send these people back?” Tapper asked.

“Well, I think, like I said, Jake, this is a decision that’s being made from the State Department, from myself and the president, and there’s a lot of things that we look at as when we take this in consideration,” Mullin said. “It’s not just one factor that plays into this.”

“The reason I ask is because I heard Stephen Miller, who is driving a lot of this, say that Haiti is safe for Haitians,” Tapper said. “And I just looked at the State Department’s website, and they have a level four do not travel advisory for Haiti just from a few months ago, from April, and it says, ‘Violent crime is rampant. The expansion of gang organized crime and terrorist activity has led to widespread violence. Crimes involving firearms are common. Crimes include robbery, carjacking, sexual assault and kidnappings for ransom.’ That doesn’t sound safe to me.”

“Well, that do not travel is not for Haitians,” Mullin said. “That’s do not travel for the United States, because they are kidnapping or trying to kidnap individuals from the United States because they feel like their family has the money to pay the ransom.”

“I understand that,” Tapper said in reply. “But based on everything I have read, including the U.N. and Human Rights Watch, it doesn’t sound safe for Haitians. More than 8,100 killings documented last year, those weren’t Americans. Haiti is among the top five countries with the highest rates of rape and sexual abuse, with more than 1,200 cases of sexual violence last year. That’s not Americans; 1.4 million people have been displaced. Those aren’t Americans.”

Mullin paused a beat and said, “Is there a question in that?”

“Well…let me let me ask you,” Tapper said. “You said you’re going to give them a plane ticket if they want to get out and go back to Haiti. How logistically would it happen? Because the FAA prohibits commercial flights to Port-au-Prince because of the gunfire from terrorists and gangs.”

“So, we have several options for deporting individuals, because we have deportation flights, where we can get into areas where maybe commercial travel can’t go to,” Mullin responded. “So we’d simply book them on a flight. We expect to have pretty full flights going back to Haiti and going back to some of these countries where TPS has been eliminated. So we will provide the travel for them. And, like I said, we will give them $2,100 roughly to go back home. We want the individuals to be repatriated to their country. Maybe they can go back there and help restore their countries.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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