ICE Director Thomas Homan Calls For Arrest of Politicians in Sanctuary Cities

Thomas Homan, acting head of the American Gestapo Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had quite an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News this morning. Inevitably, the topic of sanctuary cities arose—those isolated safe harbors that refuse to enforce certain federal immigration rules in an effort to limit deportation and broken families. The protective actions of sanctuary cities take many forms, from forbidding police to pose questions about a citizen’s immigration status to refusing federal detention requests.

Clearly, there is high tension between the leaders of sanctuary cities and organizations like ICE that operate at the behest of the Trump administration. And now the most powerful man within ICE, in response to California becoming a so-called “sanctuary state,” wants to turn his opponents into criminals. Watch Homan below:

Per The Hill:

Homan said the Department of Justice needs “to file charges against the sanctuary cities” and “hold back their funding.”

Homan, who was announced in December as President Trump’s pick to permanently run the agency, went on to say that politicians enforcing sanctuary city policies need to be held “personally accountable.”

“We gotta take [sanctuary cities] to court, and we gotta start charging some of these politicians with crimes,” he said.

Nor was Homan shy about issuing a threat to California in response to Gov. Jerry Brown’s legislation:

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“Well look, if he thinks he’s protecting immigrant communities, he’s doing quite the opposite. Because if he thinks ICE is going away, we’re not. There’s no sanctuary from federal law enforcement. Matter of fact, we’re in the process now, I’m going to significantly increase our enforcement presence in California, we’re going to detail additional enforcement assets to California. California better hold on tight, they’re about to see a lot more special agents, a lot more deportation officers.”

Homan seemed to derive a strange kind of macho pleasure from saying California should “hold on tight,” a rhetorical fetish that was confirmed when he repeated it at the 2:55 mark. Otherwise, it was mostly the same immigrant demonization act we’ve come to expect since Trump originally called Mexicans rapists in his first official speech as a candidate. If Trump endorses his idea via the justice department, it will signal a sea change in American immigration policy.