The Secretary of Homeland Security detailed the impact of the 76-day partial government shutdown, even as high-profile Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) described it as a political victory. He said the shutdown not only limited the department’s ability to protect the homeland but also led to a significant workforce decline, with staffing down 8 percent and several contractors simply walking off of jobs.
The shutdown finally came to an end yesterday when the House passed a bill to fund DHS, though funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is set to be passed in a separate vote.
.@SecMullinDHS says the Democrat shutdown of @DHSgov caused a mass exodus at critical agencies: Just @CISAgov, we’re down 1,100 people—almost 1/3 of the workforce. We had contractors walking off the border wall. It was absurd, and AOC wants to sit there and say it was worth it? pic.twitter.com/gM1GpFbO5n
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 1, 2026
"What we have now is an opportunity to actually move forward," Secretary Mullin said as a result of the bill. "What was taking place was tearing Homeland all together from the Coast Guard all the way down to ICE and everybody in between. This TSA, we lost almost eight percent of the workforce, which is almost double what our attrition rate typically is."
"Just CISA, who takes care of our cybersecurity. We're down eleven hundred people. So almost a third of the workforce is no longer with us," he continued. "Seventy-six days being shut down, not going to be operational."
"People say, well, but they're getting paid. We had State Department paying our electricity bill," Mullin said. "We had D.O.W. Secretary Hegseth was paying our gas bill for the United States Coast Guard to operate. We may be able to pay paychecks, but we couldn't do anything."
We had contractors walking off the border wall. We have drone defense companies that were subcontracting from that was walking off jobs because we have MOUs, Memorandum of Understanding, with law enforcement that's got to deliver these eleven cities that we got FIFA coming to with the World Cup that haven't been paid since February. It was absolutely absurd.
"And AOC wants to sit there and say it was worth it," Secretary Mullin added. "We are tasked to protect the homeland. I don't care where AOC lives or how she votes. My job is still to protect her constituents. And she thinks it's worth it to put their lives at danger because no other agency protects the homeland. DHS protects the homeland and she thinks it's worth it. It's sad."