“I’ve overseen more deportations than any man since the Eisenhower administration.”
Speaking at CPAC on Thursday, Border Czar Tom Homan said that the Trump administration is not backing off from mass deportations.
This comes as there have been some reports that the president has been going away from the message of mass deportations.
“I see there’s a lot of language out there that President Trump’s backing off of mass deportation. No, he’s not. Look, people are saying I’m not serious about deportation. … I’ve overseen more deportations than any man since the Eisenhower administration. Tom Homan is not weak on deportation,” Homan said while speaking to Mercedes Schlapp at CPAC.
He later added that it’s just a matter of priorities with who is getting arrested and deported first. “Just because we say we’re prioritizing the public safety threats and national security threats doesn’t mean we’re not looking at everybody else.”
Homan spoke about the three missions that he got from Trump when he was assigned his role at the beginning of the administration, including securing the border, conducting mass deportations, and finding the missing children who were trafficked into the US by the cartels.
He also talked about how ICE’s activity in arresting and deporting more illegal immigrants in the country has led to more self-deportations. “We’re at over 2 million self-removals, and the reason that is because they know ICE is out there. There’s no free zone anymore. You enter this country illegally … we’re looking for you. We’re gonna find you. We’re gonna deport you.”
Homan quipped during the conversation, “Marco Rubio has nothing on me, I have more jobs than he does,” in reference to a common meme where Secretary of State Rubio is tasked with more jobs in the administration. The Border Czar touched on multiple objectives that he has been assigned by Trump, including the de-escalation in Minnesota, which he said has resulted in Minnesota authorities working with ICE more to deport criminals.
He said there has been “unprecedented assistance from the counties” and there has been “great assistance from the state police” in detaining criminal illegal immigrants.
