Nunna Daul Tsuny

usapolitics.news   Analytical Journalism

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"We had only the voices of the wind to speak for us." — Anonymous Cherokee elder, Trail of Tears, 1838

Markwayne Mullin was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 26, 1977. He is Cherokee through his maternal grandfather Kenneth Morris. His ancestry includes Native Americans who arrived in Oklahoma both before and after the Trail of Tears — which means some of his ancestors walked the removal route and some were already there when the survivors arrived. He is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. His ancestry includes Native Americans who arrived in Oklahoma both before and after the Trail of Tears — the former group what the Cherokee call Old Settlers, people who left before the soldiers came, which Mullin once described on Fox News as a "volunteer walk." The Cherokee Phoenix called that phrase an outrage. A Cherokee writer at High Country News was more precise: they volunteered to leave in the sense that they chose to move before being forced. The threat had already worked. In March 2026, when Donald Trump nominated him to lead the Department of Homeland Security, he became the first member of the Cherokee Nation to serve in the Cabinet of the United States.

He is now the man who runs the removal machine.

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. It authorized the forced relocation of the Cherokee and other Indigenous nations from their ancestral lands in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama to territory west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee had been on those lands for centuries before the United States existed. They were not immigrants. They had not crossed anyone's border. The government made their presence on their own land illegal by legislative act — not because they had done anything wrong, but because the land was wanted and a law was passed to take it.

In 1832, the Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia that the Cherokee Nation was a distinct political community with sovereign rights, that Georgia's laws had no force on Cherokee territory, and that the removal was unconstitutional. Andrew Jackson — known to the Cherokee as Sharp Knife — ignored the ruling. The removal proceeded. Approximately 16,000 Cherokee were force-marched westward in the winter of 1838 and 1839. Historians estimate that between 4,000 and 8,000 died of cold, hunger, and disease along the route the Cherokee called Nunna daul Tsuny: the Trail Where They Cried.

The survivors arrived in Oklahoma. Their descendants are still there. One of them is Markwayne Mullin.

The legal architecture that produced the Trail of Tears and the legal architecture that produces modern immigration enforcement are not metaphors for each other. They are the same structure, iterated. In both cases, a population's presence is made illegal by legislative act. In both cases, enforcement is carried out through detention and forcible removal. In both cases, courts have intervened and the executive has treated those interventions as obstacles rather than law. Jackson defied Worcester v. Georgia. The current administration has transferred detainees to foreign prisons before habeas petitions could be heard, outrunning judicial review by air. The mechanism is refined. The logic is identical.

Mullin has been consistent about where he stands inside that logic. When asked about U.S.-born children whose undocumented parents are deported, he said: "They should go where their parents are. Why wouldn't you send a child with their parents? Why would you want to separate them?" The answer he did not give is that the Cherokee children who walked the Trail of Tears had no say in whether they went where their parents were taken either. The removal did not ask. Neither does ICE.

At a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on June 25, 2026, Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro pressed Mullin on the separation of children from their families during ICE raids and at the border. Mullin sidestepped the questions, became irate, told DeLauro "you should be put in your place," and was seen squeezing a pink stress ball throughout. The chairman of the subcommittee had to intervene. The question about the children was never answered.

Four days later, on June 29, Mullin appeared at an official government briefing to discuss the FIFA World Cup, which the United States is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico. Iran's national team had just been eliminated from the tournament on goal difference, their stoppage-time winner against Egypt ruled out for a marginal offside call. The Iranian squad had trained in Tijuana, Mexico throughout the competition. They were permitted to enter the United States only the day before each match and required to leave the same day. Their federation president, Mehdi Taj, was denied a visa entirely. When the team was finally eliminated and their visas revoked, Mullin told reporters: "I'm just glad they're done, and they're not coming back. I was so happy when we were able to pull their visas and said they could leave U.S. soil, and I might've sung a song or two, or maybe even danced a happy dance."

The Iranian squad left Tijuana with a handwritten note thanking the people of the city for their hospitality. They asked, in writing, whether every nation had truly competed under equal professional conditions.

The Cherokee Nation has a phrase for what happened to them in 1838. Nunna daul Tsuny. The Trail Where They Cried. The phrase survives because the people survived — some of them, enough of them, to carry the language and the memory into Oklahoma and forward into the present. Markwayne Mullin carries that memory in his blood and his enrollment. He has spoken about his Cherokee heritage publicly. It is part of his official biography.

It is not part of his policy.

Mullin told Fox News on March 2, 2026 — days after the United States launched a war against Iran that killed 120 children in a school in Minab on its first morning — that "war is ugly, it smells bad, and if anybody's ever been there, and been able to smell the war that's happened around you and taste it and feel it in your nostrils and hear it, it's something that you'll never forget and it's ugly." Mullin has no documented military service. His official biography lists him as a businessman and a former professional mixed martial arts fighter. He privately told colleagues he had done dangerous private security work in Middle East war zones before entering politics, but there is no public record of it. When Axios asked him about it, he said: "Brother, you know that I can't — I can't talk about any questions like this." He later told Fox News: "I'm not Rambo."

The Cherokee warriors who resisted removal were not Rambo either. They were people defending their homes under a legal framework the Supreme Court had affirmed in their favor, against an executive that had decided the court's ruling was optional. They lost. Their descendants walked to Oklahoma in the winter.

One of those descendants is now the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States. He runs a detention system that holds 73,000 people on an average day — the largest in the agency's history. He oversees facilities where a five-year-old U.S. citizen was held until a judge ordered his release, where a 13-year-old attempted suicide and was deported to Colombia, where measles spread through a population of detained mothers and children. He dances when people are expelled from American soil. He tells congresswomen they should be put in their place when they ask about separated children. He describes the smell of a war he did not fight.

Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. The Supreme Court said he could not. He did it anyway. Jackson's descendants in office have learned from that precedent: move fast enough and the courts become irrelevant. Transfer the detainees before the habeas petition lands. Revoke the visas before the hearing is scheduled. Dance when they leave.

The Cherokee called Jackson Sharp Knife. They called him that because he was precise about what he was doing and who he was doing it to. Mullin's position in this history is not simple and it is not for any outsider to adjudicate. What he carries in his blood and what he carries in his badge are his own to reconcile.

But the machine does not reconcile. The machine removes. It removed the Cherokee from Georgia in 1838 and it removes families from Minnesota in 2026 and it revokes the visas of Iranian athletes in Texas and it holds children in Dilley until they attempt suicide or a judge intervenes, whichever comes first.

Markwayne Mullin runs the machine. His grandfather's people built it — not by choice, but as its first cargo.

That is not a metaphor. That is the record.

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Sources

Wikipedia. "Markwayne Mullin." Updated July 2026.

Indian Country Today. "4 Things to Know About Markwayne Mullin." March 12, 2026.

High Country News. "This Cherokee Congressman Is for Trump — and Indian Country." Graham Lee Brewer. December 9, 2019, updated March 10, 2026.

Cherokee Phoenix. "Mullin: 'Volunteer Walk' Comment Referred to Old Settlers." November 2, 2018.

Poynter / PolitiFact. "What Did Sen. Markwayne Mullin Say About the 'Smell' of War?" March 6, 2026.

Axios. "Sen. Markwayne Mullin's Secret War Zone Past." March 18, 2026.

The Hill. "Mullin Clashes with Rep. DeLauro over Child Separation in ICE Custody." June 25, 2026.

The Mirror US. "Livid Markwayne Mullin Squeezes Stress Ball as He Struggles to Control Temper." June 25, 2026.

Newsweek. "What Markwayne Mullin Has Said About ICE, Immigration, Border Security." March 6, 2026.

WION News. "US Security Chief Celebrates Iran's Early World Cup Exit with 'Happy Dance.'" June 30, 2026.

IBTimes UK. "US Security Chief Markwayne Mullin Under Fire for Doing a 'Happy Dance' After Iran's World Cup Exit." July 1, 2026.

RT. "US Security Chief Says He 'Danced a Happy Dance' While Targeting Iranian World Cup Footballers." July 1, 2026.

Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832).