White House Border Czar: ‘Amnesty Is Off The Table’
White House border official Tom Homan said Thursday in a news conference shared online that the Trump administration is not considering amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Homan, responding to a question about whether illegal immigrants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy — also known as Dreamers — would be deported when mass deportations resume, said, “If you’re in the country illegally, you have a problem,” according to a C-SPAN 3 video.
“Someone said I made a comment about the ongoing discussions about amnesty. I’ve said from day one, I’ll say it again…President Trump said amnesty is not on the table. I support that. I don’t think amnesty should be on the table,” he added.
The fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities no longer appear to be making headlines does not mean the Trump administration has backtracked on its plan to deport illegal immigrants en masse, Homan said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with CBS News. “The numbers are down slightly, I think, 12%, because of the government shutdown,” he told the outlet.
He said ICE’s operations in Minneapolis, Minn., were not perfect and he had to make corrections when he was deployed there by the administration. These measures have led to “unprecedented support from county jails across the state that we didn’t have before,” he added. (RELATED: Trump admin places officers involved in Alex Pretti shooting on administrative leave)
Homan visited Minnesota in January following the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. He previously said he met with various officials, including Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
“We caught the bad guy in prison security. Which means we didn’t have to go to the streets to find him, right? So you send a whole team of six or seven guys to go get this person, and things were so high, the hatred and violence was so high. Now we have to send a security team to support the task force,” he told the outlet.
Homan told FOX News on Thursday that the administration was keen to deport all illegal aliens, while prioritizing the deportation of criminal illegal aliens, in order to “send a message to the whole world” that illegal immigration is criminal.
“About 60 percent of those we arrest are criminals. 40 percent are non-criminals. I like that math! I think 60 criminals, 40 non-criminals is better than 40 criminals, 60 non-criminals,” he told the outlet.
He also pledged to send more agents to New York and called sanctuary cities “dangerous.”
