How immigration courts are quietly speeding up deportations
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Tamara Keith, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Jimena |
| 0:08.5 | Bustillo and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. |
| 0:13.0 | Today on the show, Mark Wayne Mullen took over as Secretary of Homeland Security about two months ago. |
| 0:18.7 | We're going to take a look at how he's making his mark on immigration |
| 0:22.0 | enforcement. And Jimena, I want to start with you. What changes have you seen since Mullen came on the job? |
| 0:29.9 | Mullen's goal was to take DHS out of the headlines. That is what he said during his confirmation hearing. He didn't want, |
| 0:40.0 | essentially, the big press about immigration tactics and the use of force that was being used, |
| 0:47.1 | particularly in cities like Minneapolis, that ultimately did lead to the death of two U.S. |
| 0:52.6 | citizens there. He wanted to, you know, come into the |
| 0:56.8 | agency, get an understanding of everything that he's working with and dealing with, and then kind of |
| 1:02.3 | see how to move forward on the Trump mass deportation campaign. Yeah, I think it's kind of like a, |
| 1:06.9 | you know, kind of a pulling away from the dramatic spectacle raids that we saw in Minneapolis |
| 1:12.4 | and other parts of the country, but clearly kind of like broader enforcement measures |
| 1:16.8 | are still moving forward. And I'd say we really got a big display of that, you know, that |
| 1:23.0 | effort at least this week and how it may play a role in kind of the campaign for the midterms. Trump had |
| 1:29.3 | his, you know, big cabinet meeting yesterday. He kicked off the meeting talking about how |
| 1:35.0 | secure the border was, how reductions in the amount of fentanyl were coming across. It wasn't just Trump, |
| 1:41.0 | you know, several cabinet officials spoke. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also talked about immigration in the border. |
| 1:47.6 | And Mullen also spoke at the cabinet meeting where he talked about these demonstrations at an immigration facility in New Jersey where there has been some hunger strikes. |
| 1:57.2 | They say that it's because they're on a hunger strike when there was |
| 2:01.2 | only a handful of individuals that was refusing to eat because they want their ethnic group or their |
| 2:05.4 | ethnic right food. Well, they go back to their country and get whatever food they want. The fact is, |
... |
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