The Trump administration's escalating standoff with sanctuary cities took a dramatic leap Monday when newly sworn-in Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin floated what amounts to a nuclear option: pulling Customs and Border Protection officers from international airports in cities that don't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement — a move that would effectively shut down international travel at San Francisco International Airport, LAX, JFK, O'Hare, and a dozen other major hubs across the country.
In his first interview since being sworn in as DHS secretary on March 24, Mullin told Fox News's "Special Report" that the department is reviewing whether sanctuary jurisdictions should continue receiving federal customs processing services. "If they're a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city?" Mullin asked host Bret Baier. "If they're a sanctuary city and they're receiving international flights, and we're asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport, they're not going to enforce immigration policy — maybe we need to have a really hard look at that," as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Which Cities and Airports Are on the Line
San Francisco isn't alone in this. The full list of airports that could lose CBP officers reads like a roll call of America's most important international gateways. According to analysis by Paddle Your Own Kanoo, the threat covers airports in Los Angeles, New York (JFK), Chicago O'Hare, Boston Logan, Denver International, Newark, Seattle, Portland, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Minneapolis — and if extended to DOJ's broader list of sanctuary states, San Diego and Minneapolis-St. Paul would also be affected. Those 11 airports collectively processed roughly 132 million international passengers in 2024 alone. JFK, where international passengers make up about 57% of total volume, would be hit hardest — roughly 3 million people clear customs there every single month, per the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The stakes for San Francisco specifically are not abstract. SFO handled nearly 16 million international passengers in 2025 — about 29% of its total traffic — generated $1.37 billion in revenue, and connects nonstop to more than 140 global destinations. Without CBP officers on-site, those international flights simply can't land. The timing couldn't be worse: SFO is the primary international gateway for the Bay Area's six FIFA World Cup matches at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara this summer, with tens of thousands of fans from around the world booked to arrive in June and July, per Matador Network. LAX and JFK are also World Cup host city airports, making the potential economic and diplomatic fallout of this threat truly staggering in scope.
Half of All U.S. International Travel, Gone
Here's the number that puts Mullin's threat in sharpest focus: the 11 sanctuary-jurisdiction airports he's implicitly targeting collectively processed approximately 132 million international passengers in 2024 — roughly half of all U.S. international air travel, according to analysis by Paddle Your Own Kanoo, cross-referenced against Bureau of Transportation Statistics monthly data showing approximately 265 million total U.S. international enplanements per year. The top five sanctuary city airports alone account for roughly 40% of all U.S. international air travel.
| Airport | City | Intl. Passengers (2024) | ~% of U.S. Intl. Travel |
|---|---|---|---|
| JFK | New York City | 35.3M | ~13% |
| LAX | Los Angeles | 24.1M | ~9% |
| EWR | Newark / New York | ~16M | ~6% |
| SFO | San Francisco | 15.8M | ~6% |
| ORD | Chicago | 14.5M | ~5% |
| BOS, DEN, SEA, PDX, PHL, MSY, MSP | Other sanctuary cities | ~26M | ~10% |
| All 11 Sanctuary Airport Cities | ~132M | ~50% | |
Sources: Port Authority of NY/NJ 2024 Annual Report; LAX, SFO, ORD airport statistics; BTS monthly international enplanement data. Figures are approximate and include both arrivals and departures.
Worth noting: those numbers are almost certainly the floor, not the ceiling. Mullin used the phrase "sanctuary cities" on Fox News, but the DOJ's own formal sanctuary jurisdiction list — published in August 2025 under Executive Order 14287 — designates 13 entire states plus Washington D.C., not just individual cities. That list includes California, New York, Illinois, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont, according to CBS News. If Mullin's threat were applied at the state level — which the administration's own framework technically supports — the roster of affected international airports would expand significantly to include airports like Las Vegas (Nevada), Washington Dulles (D.C.), San Diego (California), and dozens of smaller international gateways across those 13 states. Whether that's the actual intent or just an uncomfortable implication of the administration's own paperwork is, at this point, an open question nobody in the White House has answered.
How Likely Is This to Actually Happen?
Honestly? Less likely than the headline suggests — but not impossible, which is the part that matters. Mullin stopped well short of announcing any concrete policy action, using phrases like "we may take a hard look" and "I'm going to have to be forced to make hard decisions." Read charitably, this is a negotiating tactic tied to the ongoing partial DHS funding shutdown, designed to pressure Democratic-led cities and Congress simultaneously. Read less charitably, it's a secretary who was calling the sanctuary city fight a "misunderstanding" at his confirmation hearing three weeks ago and is now floating economic armageddon on cable news.
The legal obstacles alone make implementation a steep climb. U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick III of San Francisco has already issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration from retaliating against sanctuary jurisdictions by withholding federal funds or services — and legal experts told the Chronicle that pulling CBP from airports would almost certainly trigger immediate federal court challenges under the same logic. There's also the small matter of the U.S. economy: shutting down customs processing at the country's busiest international airports during a FIFA World Cup, during an already fragile economic moment, is the kind of move that tends to produce swift blowback even within an administration's own coalition. Mullin's predecessor Kristi Noem was fired, in part, for making unilateral decisions — like briefly pulling TSA PreCheck and Global Entry — without White House clearance.
What this looks like in practice is a high-decibel pressure campaign rather than an imminent operational change. But pressure campaigns have a way of escalating when they don't get the response they're looking for.
California Fires Back
Governor Gavin Newsom's office didn't exactly take the suggestion under advisement. "If you thought the economy was bad with Trump's war driving prices at the pump up … just wait until international travel is halted at some of the busiest airports in the world," Newsom's press office posted on X. "Talk about a stupid idea." California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who told the Chronicle in January that the administration's immigration threats are "completely lawless," has previously signaled the state will pursue legal action to block any such measures.
San Francisco's Position
San Francisco has operated as a sanctuary city since 1989, limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration detention requests. The city's sanctuary ordinance has survived multiple previous federal challenges and remains deeply entrenched. Mayor Daniel Lurie's administration had not issued a formal response to Mullin's comments as of Monday evening. The city's position is unlikely to shift under political pressure — which means the standoff, if it does escalate from cable news rhetoric to actual policy, will land in federal court long before it reaches SFO's International Terminal. Whether that's reassuring or just exhausting depends on your tolerance for the current political moment.
