Trump Border Czar Defends Arresting ‘Non-Criminal’ Migrants: ‘That’s Our Job’
President Donald Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan defended the administration’s arrests of illegal immigrants with no criminal record, telling reporters on Monday that anyone in the US without documentation who is discovered by ICE, even accidentally, will be subject to immediate detention and deportation.
“I see people saying we’re arresting non-criminals,” said Homan. “They’re in the country illegally. That’s our job.”
In response to a question about who ICE prioritizes for arrest, the former director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said:
Same as day one. National security threats, public safety threats are always the priority. But if you’re in the country illegally you’re not off the table. I mean I see people saying we’re arresting non-criminals. Well, they’re in the country illegally that’s our job. And we told ICE agents in the process of going out looking for the bad guy– and this is the problem with sanctuary cities.
When we go to a community to go find the criminal, many times they’re with others. Others that may not be a criminal target, but they’re in the United States illegally they’re coming too. We’re gonna enforce immigration law. Unlike the last administration where Secretary Mayorkas instructed ICE ‘you can’t arrest illegal aliens for simply being here illegally. they got to be arrested, be convicted of a serious criminal offense.’ He re-wrote the law. That’s not what the law says. We’re gonna enfore law. That’s why the people put President Trump in office to do and that’s what we’re doing.
The administration has faced backlash in recent months for cracking down on illegal immigration in farming, hospitality, and construction industries– a sharp digression from Trump’s campaign promise to first go after “the worst of the worst.” More than half of the migrants arrested by ICE have no prior criminal record, according to the Deportation Data Project.
Although Trump had an apparent change of heart surrounding the deportation of restaurant and farm workers in early June, ICE agents still have to meet massive quotas for arrests– a process that often forces agents to go for easy targets, rather than hardened criminals, and sometimes results in mistaken arrests.
Watch above via C-SPAN.
