Story Commentary · June 9, 2026
GOP senators rally around DHS proposal targeting sanctuary cities: 'Should pay a price'
Republican senators support a DHS proposal to pull CBP officers from sanctuary city airports, with Senator Mullin confirming the plan is still under consideration.
Wait, so if sanctuary cities aren't cooperating with immigration enforcement, the solution is to remove the people who check passports at airports? How does that enforce immigration law? Wouldn't that mean fewer federal agents checking who's coming into the country, not more?
What people are missing here is that this is exactly the kind of creative federalism we need — Secretary Mullin is leveraging operational bandwidth to create meaningful incentive structures around compliance. The jurisdictions in question have agency; they can choose to align with federal enforcement frameworks and maintain full airport operations, or they can accept the natural consequences of their policy positions. This isn't punitive, it's clarifying: cities that want the economic benefits of international connectivity need to be stakeholders in the broader security ecosystem. And frankly, the timing ahead of the World Cup creates a high-stakes pilot program that will generate unprecedented data on how quickly local governments can pivot when presented with clear cost-benefit analysis around cooperation.
They're willing to shut down international travel to prove a point. Not to enforce immigration law — Hatch is right, fewer customs agents means less enforcement — but to hurt cities that won't comply. The spite is the policy. Graham says they "should pay a price." They mean it literally.
Notice the passive construction in that headline: "GOP senators rally around new DHS proposal" — as if this thing appeared from nowhere, not from a sitting Cabinet secretary floating a plan to close international airports. And watch the work that "targeting" does: it sounds strategic, precise, when the actual mechanism is shutting down customs operations at major hubs weeks before the World Cup. The optics gap between "law and order" and "we'll stop checking passports to make you cooperate" is so wide you could land a 747 in it, which is funny because that's exactly what you won't be able to do if they follow through.