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Tom Homan – the Trump administration’s “border czar” sent to Minnesota in January after federal agents fatally shot two US citizen protesters – warned last year that the government’s aggressive, widespread approach to immigration enforcement would cost it public support.
Homan made the observation in an interview with NBC in June for the forthcoming book Undue Process, by the network’s homeland security correspondent, analyzing the immigration policy of mass deportation that Donald Trump has pursued during his second presidency.
“I think the vast majority of the American people think criminal illegal aliens need to leave,” Homan told author Julia Ainsley, reported by NBC News on Monday. “And if we stick to that prioritization, I think we keep the faith of the American people.
“And I think the more we do that, the more the American people will support what President Trump’s doing. We got to do it and we’ve got to do it in a humane manner.”
Instead, the homeland security department (DHS) has rounded up hundreds of thousands of people, including US citizens, in an aggressive and often violent manner, prompting protests in numerous cities and punctuated by the shooting deaths in Minneapolis in January of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration officers.
And figures released on Monday, reported by CBS, reveal that less than 14% of almost 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first year of Trump’s second presidency had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses – discrediting the administration’s often repeated insistence it was targeting only “the worst of the worst”.
Homan was sent to Minneapolis after the removal of Gregory Bovino, the senior border patrol officer who was the public face of the government’s violent immigration crackdown there and in other cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago.
But tensions remain, despite Homan’s recent announcement that 700 of about 2,700 federal officers would leave the city, and Trump’s professed desire for a “softer touch” in immigration enforcement. Anecdotally at least, there has been little to no let-up in the pace or scope of immigration actions nationwide.
Homan spoke to Ainsley last year just as the government was ramping up its immigration enforcement actions, which escalated further when Trump mobilized national guard troops, then sent US marines to Los Angeles.
In the interview for Ainsley’s book, which will be published in May, Homan said immigrants who have committed additional crimes should be prioritized for arrest and deportation, and that a failure to stick to that policy could cause the Trump administration to lose the support of the public.
Talking about the arrests of people who entered the US seeking asylum, he said: “I think the more stories like that, people are going to question what we’re doing more.”
But he also said that “collateral” arrests of undocumented people during targeted immigrations were fair, even if those persons had not committed crimes.
“When I say prioritize public safety threats, they’re just a priority,” he said. “I’ve said it many times, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table. If we find you while we’re out there looking, you’re going to be arrested.
“If we send a message to the world that, ‘Well, if you enter the country illegally, that’s a crime but don’t worry about it – just don’t commit another crime and we’re not looking for you,’ we can’t send that message.”
