Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a Breitbart News policy event that the Trump administration now intercepts migrants at the border and returns them, denying asylum claims that fail to meet statutory criteria.

He linked a fall in daily land encounters to roughly 10,000 and a 99 percent drop in known uncaught crossings to a post-inauguration emphasis on enforcement over prior processing. Mullin described that approach as humanitarian, pointing to the risks of stranding people in remote desert and to more than 450,000 missing children of whom fewer than 160,000 have been located.

On a Biden-era visit he watched groups released from trailers in isolated terrain that occupied agents for a full shift, leaving other sectors unmonitored so additional people, drugs or terrorists could cross without being tallied. He said cartels repeated the tactic along about 1,800 miles of border.