Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan unleashed a blistering rebuke of New Yorks Democratic leadership on Wednesday night, accusing them of lying about his record and endangering public safety in the name of progressive immigration politics.
Appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Homan responded to New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after they rolled out a new initiative aimed at curbing what they describe as ICE overreach. According to Mediaite, the plan includes a $7 million taxpayer-funded legal defense program for unaccompanied migrant children and fresh limits on cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
Homan, who served as a top immigration enforcement official under President Donald Trump, erupted over the move, branding the claims from Hochul and Mamdani a blatant, disgusting lie. He said the Democrats were falsely accusing him and ICE of abandoning migrant children, when in reality, he argued, the federal government had simply restructured contracts to improve legal representation for minors in custody.
Now they want to spend millions of dollars of New York taxpayers money on defending migrant children because they said we abandoned them, Homan declared, insisting the narrative from Albany and City Hall is deliberately misleading. No, we didnt abandon them. We just changed contracts. We have a contract in place right now that defends the children at a better rate than what was being done in the past.
He stressed that under the new arrangement, no child has been left without legal counsel in immigration proceedings. There hasnt been one child at a hearing that hasnt been represented by a lawyer under this new contract. So let me say were not abandoning these children, he said, turning the accusation back on New Yorks leaders.
The only people abandoning children are you because you say you care about the safety of the children, you care about the safety of the communities well, since Ive been border czar, I wrote these numbers down since Ive been border czarNew York state has denied 14,000 detainers, over 14,000 detainers, Homan continued, citing internal enforcement data to argue that sanctuary-style policies are putting the public at risk. Who are they? 6,800 illegal aliens with assault convictions, 800 convictions for child crimes. Dont tell me youre trying to protect children! Youre releasing predators to the street everyday across the state. Youve got 770 convictions for rape and other sex crimes.
Homans comments underscored a broader conservative critique of blue-state sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation with ICE even when dealing with violent offenders. For years, law-and-order advocates have warned that such policies prioritize the comfort of illegal immigrants over the safety of American citizens, and Homans statistics were deployed to reinforce that argument in stark terms.
He then pivoted to a broader indictment of the Biden administrations border record, reviving a statistic frequently cited by Trump officials that roughly 300,000 migrant children were effectively lost under President Joe Biden. Trump has previously claimed that many of these minors ended up as slaves, sex slaves, or dead, language that immigration advocates have criticized as inflammatory but that resonates with voters alarmed by human trafficking and cartel violence.
Immigration experts and liberal commentators have pushed back, arguing that many of these children were not truly missing but caught in a dysfunctional system plagued by bureaucracy, slow paperwork, and outdated court records. Yet from Homans perspective, that defense only underscores the failure of a federal government that has chosen leniency and chaos over enforcement and order.
Im sick of the lying. Im sick of the distortion of the facts! President Trump has done more to make New York City and New York state safer than they have, Homan said, contrasting Trumps border crackdown with the permissive approach of Democratic officials. Where were they when a half a million children were separated from their families, put in the hands of criminal cartels and smuggled across the border? Some of those children died. They lost track of 300,000 of them. It was the Trump administration who has found 151,000 of these children that the Biden administration wasnt even looking for.
Some of these children are victims of sex trafficking. Some were victims of forced labor. I dont want to hear you talk about us abandoning children. Its you. Youve abandoned the taxpayers in New York, he charged, arguing that progressive immigration policies have betrayed both citizens and vulnerable migrants. Your communities are less safe because of all these criminals youre released into the street every day. Children are less safe. President Trump is saving thousands of lives every month because we have a secure border.
Homan credited Trumps enforcement posture with sharply reducing lethal narcotics and human trafficking flows. Fentanyl is not coming across to kill Americans tt the rate it was. Sex trafficking women and children has drastically declined. 4000 aliens died making that journey under Biden. How many have died since? Zero, he asserted, framing Trumps border agenda as a life-saving intervention rather than a harsh crackdown.
President trump saving thousands of lives, that includes thousands of lives in New York. Youre welcome! Youre welcome that ICE has taken thousands of criminals off your street, Homan concluded, leaving little doubt that he sees New Yorks Democratic leadership as not only wrong on policy, but morally culpable for the consequences of their choices. For conservatives, his tirade will likely reinforce a central theme heading into 2024 and beyond: that border security, strict enforcement, and cooperation with ICE are not optional ideological preferences, but essential duties of government to protect its own citizens first.
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