Mullin’s Many Lies and One Truth — His Name
Ohio Immigrant Alliance Fact Checks Secretary Mullin’s Press Conference in Warren County, OH
WARREN COUNTY — On Friday, September 4, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin held a press conference filled with lies, performative outrage, and multiple mistakes about immigration law.
“It was almost like a backwards version of two truths and a lie,” said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “But it was more like multiple lies and one truth — his name. Unfortunately, much of the media coverage just reported what Secretary Mullin said without checking his facts. When a government official lies constantly, the media can’t simply report what he says. Headlines harden into ‘truth.’ Journalism has to function as the watchdog of the public interest, and correct every misstatement he makes.”
Many of the lies Mullin told are things that the Trump administration repeats often. Here is the Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s fact-check, with data directly from the government.
Also attending the press conference were Kevin Raycraft, the Detroit ICE field office director; Christopher Norris, who replaced the criminal Samuel Saxon as Cincinnati ICE’s assistant field office director; Luke Affholter, the assistant field office director in Columbus; U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson; Warren County Sheriff Barry Riley; and Capt. Brian Payne from the Warren County Jail.
“Many of Mullin’s lies were about immigration law and policy. It’s disgraceful that the head of DHS doesn’t know the basics of the Immigration and Nationality Act and how his agencies work. Either that, or he misled the media on purpose. Still, none of the officials who knew better corrected him. So the Ohio Immigrant Alliance has taken the time to correct the record, and we urge members of the media to update their coverage and write new stories letting the American people know the many ways we are being misled by government officials whose salaries we pay,” added Tramonte.
“One of the biggest lies Secretary Mullin told was taking credit for the plummeting rate of violent crime in the United States — something that has been happening since 1990, at the same time immigration has increased. Lower crime rates have nothing to do with Trump or ICE” she continued. “But one trend they can take credit for is the increasing number of ICE and Border Patrol agents charged with and convicted of sexual and violent crimes, like Samuel Saxon and Andrew Golobic. We’ve been tracking the cases of criminal agents, and 24% of the 152 cases on our list come from 2025 and 2026 alone. The reduced hiring standards and lax background checks at ICE are partly to blame, and the problem is only getting worse.”
Secretary Mullin also made egregious mistakes about U.S. immigration law and immigrants’ hearing appearance rates. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the Secretary of Homeland Security to understand immigration law and give correct data when speaking to the media,” Tramonte added.
Read OIA’s fact check here.
Read the transcript from Mullin’s press conference and watch the video here.
