Markwayne Mullin’s answer about following court orders should alarm every American

When Markwayne Mullin appeared before Congress Tuesday for the first time as homeland security secretary, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., asked a question Mullin should have had no trouble answering: Will the Department of Homeland Security follow federal court orders?

Mullin couldn’t give Murphy a straight answer (nor could he provide one to similar questions from Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., on Wednesday). The secretary repeatedly evaded questions, refused to commit to complying with the law and suggested DHS would abide by some court orders and ignore others supposedly based on “political opinion, not just the rule of law.”

But that’s not how the rule of law works. This principle — that the government is constrained by legal rules promulgated publicly and enforced consistently — is foundational to American democracy. It is a key reason we have a government “of laws, and not of men,” as John Adams wrote 250 years ago.

Murphy’s question didn’t come out of nowhere. Earlier this year, a Republican-appointed judge found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated at least 96 federal court orders in Minnesota alone in less than a month.

While the administration has regularly described its immigration policies as upholding the rule of law, its actions tell a different story. At every step of the immigration enforcement process, the administration has repeatedly broken the law. ICE agents have conducted unconstitutional searches of private homes and made warrantless arrests, including of American citizens. An ICE memo asserted unprecedented authority to detain millions of long-term, law-abiding American residents without the possibility of bond. The government has carried out deportations without due process or any legal authority at all, and it has facilitated the imprisonment and torture of deported individuals abroad.

Throughout, the administration has ignored hundreds of court orders prohibiting the out-of-state transfer or removal of detained noncitizens and requiring bond hearings or the release of unlawfully detained individuals.

And even when the government has complied with court orders, it has done so begrudgingly and with extreme delay. When the administration finally returned Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national wrongly deported to a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador, it targeted him for an illegal and vindictive prosecution. And more than six months after ICE deported Babson College student Any Lopez Belloza in violation of a court order, she still cannot return home or resume her studies because ICE has threatened to redetain and deport her the moment she lands.

When the federal government becomes a serial lawbreaker and refuses to be reined in by the judiciary, the damage extends far beyond the immediate victims. It corrodes public faith in institutions, weakens democratic norms and signals that legal compliance is optional for those in power. As Murphy warned, “That’s actually the end of our Republic.”