As ICE controversies intensify, White House border czar Tom Homan takes aim at dissent
The national controversy surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its enforcement tactics has reached new levels in recent weeks, following incidents in which ICE officers fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo a week earlier in Texas. With this in mind, White House “border czar” Tom Homan apparently thought it’d be a good idea to field some questions from reporters as this week got underway.
It did not go especially well.
During a brief Q&A, Homan covered quite a bit of ground, downplaying federal immigration agents’ “mistakes” in Minnesota, dodging questions about ICE agents’ vetting and qualifications, and struggling to explain the administration’s decision to roll back policies related to body cams on immigration officers.
But of particular interest was Homan’s perspective on the public discourse.
“I said this a year ago,” the border czar told reporters. “If the hateful rhetoric doesn’t stop, there will be bloodshed. And unfortunately I was right. And I’ll tell you something else: It’s not over yet.”
As part of the same comments, Homan accused unnamed critics of “miscommunicating what ICE does every day,” adding, “I’m afraid that we’re going to bury an ICE agent. I’m afraid that I’m going to hand another folded flag to a spouse or child of an ICE agent for simply doing his job.”
He concluded with a condemnation of unnamed members of Congress who call ICE agents “fascists and Nazis.”
At this point, we could talk about the fact that Homan had no similar concerns when it was Donald Trump who compared federal agents to fascists and Nazis. We could also talk about Homan using violent rhetoric of his own against his political opponents.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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