GOP Rep. Puts Stress Ball-Gripping Markwayne Mullin In His Place During Hearing After He Clashes With Dem Rep. In Epic Viral Clip

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was scolded by House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security Chair Mark Amodei after Mullin got combative with Connecticut Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro during his testimony.

Mullin's confrontation began after DeLauro, the panel's ranking Democrat, referenced President Donald Trump's family separation policy, noting that roughly 3,900 children had been separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. She cited a 2021 report released during the Biden administration.

Mullin responded by invoking a separate claim often made by Trump administration officials, saying:

"450,000 kids were lost during the Biden administration, you didn't say a word about it."

The figure refers to migrant children whose sponsors or families could not later be reached by federal officials or who were not assigned immigration court dates—not to children whom DHS determined were physically missing. Critics have argued that the characterization of the children as "lost" is misleading because it conflates a lack of follow-up contact with their whereabouts being unknown.

The exchange quickly escalated after Mullin interrupted DeLauro's remarks and DeLauro, pointing her finger at Mullin, said, "Don't interrupt me!" to which Mullin replied:

"Don't you point your finger at me. Don't be a hypocrite."

"I will point my finger at you," DeLauro replied, prompting Mullin to accuse her again of hypocrisy over the "450,000 kids" claim. As the two continued talking over one another, Amodei attempted to restore order and DeLauro asked if Amodei could "put him [Mullin] in his place?"

"Don't yell at me. I'm the good guy," Amodei responded, before reminding Mullin that members were entitled to use their allotted questioning time uninterrupted.

Offering Mullin an opportunity to respond after lawmakers had finished, Amodei said he would provide Mullin with four minutes for a closing statement:

“Mr. Secretary, if you would like four minutes for a closing statement when everybody’s done, I’ll give you that. But while members are on their eight minutes, I need them to have their eight minutes."

Mullin, however, defended his interruption:

“My issue is that they say this for sound bites and I’m not going to let them say something that’s not true."

When DeLauro questioned Mullin on what he had just done "for soundbites," emphasizing her sympathies are "with the 400,000 [children]," Amodei stepped in again to scold Mullin:

“We are going to have something resembling order here. The time is the ranking member’s. If you would like to respond later on there are methods to do that but it’s not a who can talk louder into the mic.”

A defensive Mullin countered that he "will not let her [DeLauro] sit there and lie and accuse something that’s ridiculous," but Amodei was firm:

“You know, this is the legislative branch and it’s my hearing and so I’m going to try to some extent to control it moderately."

The confrontation ended on a tense note when DeLauro warned Mullin he should not accuse her of lying and replied with the following after Mullin said, "Then don't":

“I do not. I appreciate and I said to you at the outset there’s concern for children across the board. We care deeply about what’s happening to children and I went to the border and I watched children in those fenced-in places years ago and what was happening to them, so I have a long history, Mr. Secretary, in this area.”

You can watch their exchange in the video below.

At another point, Mullin—who gripped a stress ball throughout the hearing—had to be scolded again by Amodei after interrupting DeLauro again to accuse her of "shutting down" Trump's efforts to crackdown on immigration:

"Mr. Secretary, the floor is hers. Actually, I gave it to her. You know, there is a chairman of the committee? That's me. I gave it to her."

You can watch what happened in the video below.

Mullin was criticized after footage of these exchanges went viral.

Earlier this month, the Brookings Institution reported that more than 145,000 children have had at least one parent detained over immigration-related issues during Trump's second term, while more than 22,000 have experienced the detention of both parents.

ICE has disputed characterizations that it separates families, previously telling The Hill that parents are given the choice of being removed with their children or designating another safe caregiver to take custody. Meanwhile, Mullin and his predecessor, Kristi Noem, have repeatedly asserted that 450,000 unaccompanied migrant children went "missing" during the Biden administration.

The claim refers to children who were released to sponsors and later could not be contacted or tracked by federal officials, rather than children whom the government determined had disappeared. Earlier this month, the department said it had located about 146,000 of those minors.