Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin spoke Sunday on Fox News’ “One Nation” about how Democratic officials keep calling to abolish ICE, and he deemed his political opponents “thugs.”

This comes after Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive and Republican candidate for governor of New York, announced his county would comply with state law and end its cooperation agreement with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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“It’s frustrating when you have these candidates … that go out there and say, ‘Abolish ICE,’ when all we’re doing is we’re enforcing our nation’s laws, and we’re keeping our streets and our cities safe because these sanctuary [state] politicians, they’re thugs on themselves,” Mullin said.

“Most of these thugs — these politicians that are true thugs at this point — that are saying, ‘Abolish ICE, abolish the police,’ they’re also the leader of this new socialist, Democrat party,” he added.

Mullin went on to describe the people ICE is arresting as rapists, murderers and  drug bangers, saying, “They’re the worst criminals you can think of.”

Host Brian Kilmeade specifically asked Mullin his thoughts on Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and progressive Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, who has been a vocal critic of ICE, and Mullin said, “Well, this guy’s a thug, and I don’t know how else to say that.”

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“He’s such an ignorant individual to say such ridiculous stuff that is nothing more than talking points,” Mullin said.

The criminalizing language, linguistic experts told HuffPost, attempts to turn political disagreement into more of an emotionally charged character judgment. Mullin, after all, oversees ICE, which directly affects the communities his language choice stereotypes, linguists argued.

“Markwayne Mullin has spent every day since taking office running ICE as Trump’s personal paramilitary force causing chaos in American streets,” an El-Sayed campaign spokesperson told HuffPost.

The DHS did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

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“Racism doesn’t always announce itself with an explicit slur,” Karen Stollznow, linguist and researcher, told HuffPost. Stollznow’s book, “On the Offensive,” discusses the history and meaning behind words like “thug.”

“‘Thug’ has an especially strong racial history because it has so often been used to evoke the stereotype of the ‘dangerous Black man,’” Stollznow said. “I’d describe it as a racially charged term that can function as a dog whistle.”

A “dog whistle” is when someone uses innocent-sounding words to send a racially charged message to an audience “familiar with its racial associations,” while still having “plausible deniability,” Stollznow said.

But “thug” may go beyond a dog whistle to some linguists. John McWhorter, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, argued in 2015 that the word’s ties to racism have made it function similarly to the N-word, especially when applied to Black men.

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“There is a good argument to be made that ‘thug’ is beyond dog whistling,” Megan Figueroa, a co-host of “The Vocal Fries” podcast, told HuffPost.

Mullin has also used the term to describe white public figures. He called Teamsters president Sean O’Brien a “thug” during a Senate hearing in 2023 after challenging him to a physical fight in response to some of O’Brien’s tweets at him.

“This reinforces the racial aspect of the coded language, not negates it,” Figueroa said. “I think of this as akin to using feminine-coded language to refer to a man in order to undermine and demean him. It is an insult because a man is being compared to a ‘lesser’ group.”

Linguists point to an overarching movement that’s been happening where public Republican figures like Mullin and President Donald Trump have started calling their opponents criminals and invoking racist and sexist stereotypes to characterize them.

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“Calling someone a ‘thug’ doesn’t tell us what is wrong with their policy position; it tells us what kind of person we should supposedly believe them to be,” Stollznow said. “That’s much quicker and more emotionally charged than explaining why you disagree with a policy. It creates an ‘us versus them’ dynamic by casting political opponents as dangerous, criminal or illegitimate rather than simply people with different views.”

“This type of criminalizing language resonates quickly and deeply because it speaks to people’s emotions,” Figueroa said. “Policy-focused appeals would appeal to the rational brain.”