Former acting director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thomas Homan, slammed Democratic lawmakers who oppose the President Trump’s border efforts.
“Look, I’ve been saying for months: Congress doesn’t care,” Homan said Friday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “Look, I think their resistance to Trump … they want to see the president fail on the number one campaign promise. I said it many times. They’re putting their hatred of this president above their responsibilities to secure this border.”
“They can’t be ignorant to what’s happening,” Homan, a longtime veteran of immigration enforcement, continued. “All you got to do is watch the videos, watch the borders. The borders … I’ve done this 34 years. It is unprecedented. I’ve never seen it this bad on the border. They’re sitting there watching the parade go by. Nothing is happening and they’re watching.”
The former ICE director, who stated that 9 out of 10 immigrant families don’t even show up to their court hearing, claimed that the situation is “out of control” and the “worse I’ve ever seen it.”
Homan’s remarks come as the situation at the southern border continues to escalate. A total of 109,144 illegal immigrants were either apprehended or turned back at the border in April.
The numbers marked the second consecutive month where immigrant encounters topped 100,000. Apprehensions at the border have risen steadily every month since January.
President Trump, who has made immigration a cornerstone of his agenda, has begun to implement a number of directives to stop the crisis, such as border wall construction and changes to asylum procedures. Many of his efforts, however, have been challenged by congressional Democrats.
“The Democrats: They want to attack the Border Patrol, they want to attack ICE,” Homan said on Friday, calling on ICE to reform immigration laws instead of attacking immigration officials. “Congress would much rather abolish the agency or tear the agency apart than do their job and legislate common sense immigration reform.”
“It was an attack on men and women of law enforcement trying to move the burden from themselves over to the fine men and women of ICE and the Border Patrol who put their lives on the line everyday for this country,” he continued.
This wasn’t the first time Homan slammed congressional Democrats for a lack of progress on border enforcement. The former ICE leader claimed earlier in May that the President should simply “forget” about Congress if he wants to solve the border crisis.
