What's Still Happening With ICE and Why It Matters Here
The New Boss, and Who's Really Being Locked Up
Meet the New Boss: Markwayne Mullin If you want to understand why conditions inside ICE detention facilities keep getting worse, start with the man now running the show. Markwayne Mullin was sworn in on March 24, 2026 as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. He is the man in charge of ICE.
Mullin is a former Republican senator from Oklahoma and a former mixed martial arts fighter. He does not have a bachelor's degree. By his own account, he is worth somewhere between 60 and 70 million dollars, money that came from his family's plumbing business. What he does not have is any meaningful law enforcement background for leading one of the most powerful and controversial agencies in the country.
What he does have is a temper, and a public record to prove it:
The Senate fistfight (November 2023): At an official U.S. Senate hearing, Mullin challenged the president of the Teamsters union, Sean O'Brien, a witness testifying before Congress, to a physical fight, right there in the hearing room. He rose out of his chair, appeared to start taking off his ring, and said: "Sir, this is a time. This is a place. If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here." Then: "Stand your butt up." Senator Bernie Sanders, chairing the hearing, had to step in and tell him, "You are a United States senator."
The biting comments: Mullin has said on camera that he is not above biting people in a fight: "I'm not afraid of biting. I will bite. In a fight, I'll do anything." Worth noting: biting is banned even in MMA, the sport Mullin competed in.
His own party called him out (March 2026): At his confirmation hearing, Senator Rand Paul, a fellow Republican and the committee chairman, played a video compilation of Mullin's outbursts and said flatly: "I don't know how he could, from my point of view, be a leader of ICE or Border Patrol." Paul asked why the public should trust a man with anger issues to set the example for over 250,000 federal officers. He also confronted Mullin for calling him a "freaking snake" and for appearing to justify the 2017 assault Paul suffered at the hands of a neighbor. When Mullin referred to historical precedent for dueling as a way to settle disputes, Paul pointed out that dueling had been illegal for roughly 170 years. Paul voted no.
The Senate confirmed Mullin anyway, on March 23, 2026, by a vote of 54 to 45. It was a bipartisan vote, though Paul was among those opposed.
Here is the problem. ICE already had a reputation for being recklessly aggressive. Now the man leading it has his own history of aggression. At his hearing Mullin did say he wanted ICE to act "more as a transport than on the front line" and pledged to require judicial warrants before agents enter homes or businesses. Whether he follows through is another question, and the conditions I will describe in Part 2 have not improved.
What Mullin says he wants is more: more agents, more detention facilities, and more money, even though billions of dollars already allocated have not been spent. He has also talked about pressuring sanctuary cities that won't cooperate. In short: less transparency, more aggression, more spending, and fewer answers to the public. That is what this new leadership looks like.
Who Is Actually Being Detained
The administration likes to say it is going after "the worst of the worst." The data says otherwise:
About 71 percent of people in ICE detention had no criminal conviction at all as of early April 2026, roughly 42,700 out of 60,300 people, according to TRAC at Syracuse University. Earlier in 2026 that share was even higher, around 74 percent.
Many of those who do have convictions were found guilty of only minor offenses, like traffic violations.
Fewer than 14 percent of arrests in the administration's first year involved a violent offense, according to internal DHS figures reported by CBS News.
So when you hear that these facilities are full of dangerous criminals, remember the numbers. The large majority of the people locked up, including the families and children at Dilley, have no criminal record. They are not the worst of the worst. In many cases they are people who showed up to their own immigration hearings and were arrested in the hallway.
Moving People to Friendlier Courts
There is another piece of this that does not get talked about enough. ICE has wide power to move detainees almost anywhere in the country, and it uses that power.
Immigration judges are not independent the way most judges are. They work inside the executive branch, under the attorney general, who has been pushing them to rule the administration's way. The result is that some immigration courts now grant nearly every request ICE makes, while others resist. An analysis by the American Immigration Council found:
Atlanta: judges granted every single one of ICE's 193 motions to dismiss cases on the spot, funneling those people toward fast-track deportation.
Los Angeles: 215 out of 217 granted.
New York's Federal Plaza: only 77 out of 268 granted.
That gap creates an incentive. ICE can move people away from courts and federal circuits that protect detainees, and toward ones that side with the agency, often far from their families and their lawyers. Immigration attorneys describe racing to file paperwork before their clients get shipped to a remote facility in a friendlier state. A congressional oversight letter from Rep. Luz Rivas described constituents whose cases were dismissed and who were then sent to detention in Texas, thousands of miles from home.
This is the machinery. In Part 2, I will show you what it is doing to the children caught inside it, where the money goes, and what we can do about it.
Sources: TRAC at Syracuse University (detention and criminal-conviction data); CBS News (internal DHS arrest data); American Immigration Council (motions to dismiss by court); CNN, CBS News, NPR, The Hill, and Snopes (Mullin confirmation, Senate confrontation, biting comments, Rand Paul exchange); congressional oversight letter from Rep. Luz Rivas (detainee transfers). Quotations are drawn from hearing footage and contemporaneous news coverage.