Border Czar Homan Responds To Families Who Say Deportees To Venezuelan Prison Not TdA

3 days ago

Border Czar Tom Homan speaks to reporters outside the White House.

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Transcript

00:00How you doing?

00:01How are you?

00:02I've got a couple of comments.

00:03I'm on my way to a meeting.

00:04Tom, since you came back into the White House, do you use Signal or any other encrypted apps

00:05to communicate with administration officials?

00:06I've got no comment on that.

00:07Sir, are you concerned that the English-language social media posts pushing immigrants to use

00:08the CBP Home app aren't reaching a predominantly Spanish-language-speaking population?

00:09I'm working on that right now.

00:10What do you mean you're working on it?

00:11You're going to see more of that.

00:12I'm working on it.

00:13I'm working on it.

00:14I'm working on it.

00:15I'm working on it.

00:16I'm working on it.

00:17I'm working on it.

00:18I'm working on it.

00:19I'm working on it.

00:20I'm working on it.

00:21What do you think your deportation target number is going to be for the year?

00:37I have no idea.

00:38It depends what kind of money we have.

00:39We need Congress to fund this mandate for the American people because with more money

00:44we can do more.

00:45We need to buy more beds.

00:46We need more airplane flights.

00:47We need more officers on the ground.

00:49we need more contracts with companies that do a lot of work that doesn't require a badge and gun.

00:54So the more money we have from Congress, the more successful we'll be on the ground.

00:58What's your estimate on how many people have been self-deported so far?

01:03Actually, we hopefully will have that number by Friday. We asked for that number yesterday.

01:07I'm waiting on it. I entirely looked at the numbers this morning. As far as interior arrests,

01:11we're at about 44,000. Just shy of 44,000 arrests in the interior.

01:15We're sure by far more than the Biden administration did in the interior.

01:19Let me address one thing. I keep reading this. We're deporting less people than Joe Biden.

01:23Let's remember, Joe Biden was counting Border Patrol removals on the border where millions

01:27of people are coming across. You can't compare our removal numbers. First of all, he was fudging

01:33numbers, adding border removals to ICE removals. And second of all, you got millions of people

01:37crossing the border and Border Patrol were bouncing some of them back. We secured the border.

01:41We're down the border crossing 96 percent, so we don't have millions of people coming

01:45across the border. To compare our removal numbers to his is just ridiculous.

01:48We can remove 100 percent of our people, and he can remove 10 percent of his people,

01:52and the number is still going to be higher because we're talking about millions of people

01:54coming across. The question that people should be asking, how many did the Trump administration

01:58release compared to the Biden administration? We're at about zero, and they're at millions.

02:02So that's the difference. And so I'm reading the story about deportation numbers are lower than

02:06Biden's. It's fake news. It's not comparing apples to apples. Compare the interior enforcement

02:12arrests, interior enforcement removals to the last administration. There we see the real difference.

02:16Do you expect the IRS to begin sharing data on potential undocumented migrants in this country?

02:23Well, I'll tell you this. Illegal aliens use American social security numbers.

02:28Together with identity theft, we're looking to protect social security. We're looking out to

02:32protect United States citizens' identity and their benefits from social security. I've done

02:37this for a long time. Illegal aliens many times use social security numbers. You're a citizen.

02:41It causes a lot of problems. Just identity theft. Even my own family, one of my closest relatives

02:48had his ID stolen, his social security number stolen. So we're going to look out for American

02:52people. We're going to protect social security. But do you expect them to share? Do you expect

02:55IRS to share? I hope so. I think, again, to protect American citizens, their social security

03:01benefits, protect their identity from being stolen. That's one way we can do it.

03:05What would you say to families of some of the individuals deported who say that they do not

03:09have affiliations to gangs, to TDA? Are you going to provide more details about that?

03:16Look, I'm not aware. I didn't drill into everyone on that plane. We left that up to ICE. The highest

03:23officials at ICE have said that they are confident that every one of the men and women on those

03:28planes are a member of TDA. Everybody's, how do you know? A lot of this stuff is law enforcement

03:33sensitive. I'm not going to share a lot of this stuff with you because we certainly don't want

03:36to show how we do our inside work because that's going to just help the criminals out there once

03:41they read it. But I can tell you, hundreds and hundreds of hours were spent on investigations,

03:47whether it's looking at their criminal history, whether it's looking at immigration history,

03:50whether it's looking at undercover videos, whether it's talking to informants, whether

03:56it's talking to other members of the gang who gave sworn statements. There's a lot of ways that

04:00this was done. A lot of time was spent doing this. Again, and I got assurances from the highest

04:07levels of ICE that this was done right and everybody in that plane bends away for TDAs.

04:11And I've got to remember, first of all, let's remember one thing. First of all,

04:14everyone on that plane was an illegal alien in the country illegally. Number two, many of that

04:19plane were removed through Title VIII. They already had it removed from an immigration judge. And

04:24again, we're talking about terrorists. TDA and MS-13 was on that plane. They've been designated

04:27terrorist organizations. These are not good people. So I trust the men and women at ICE that they did

04:31the right thing and I stand by it. How much focus right now is the administration putting on those

04:36who have committed crimes versus those who have not committed crimes who are immigrants?

04:41I didn't hear that question. How much focus is the administration putting on those who have

04:45committed crimes versus those who have not committed crimes? Well, the prioritization

04:49is those who are public safety threats and national security threats. Let me share it with

04:53you because we just had an operation in Boston, 370 apprehensions. Most of them were criminals,

04:59but many were collaterals, majority of criminals. How come the collaterals? I've said this a thousand

05:04times. Sanctuary City is going to get exactly what they don't want, more agents in the community

05:09and more collateral arrests. Why? Because if we can't get access to the bad guy in a county jail,

05:14if they're going to choose to release them in the public, which is just, releasing a public

05:18safety threat in the public, it's just dumb to begin with because it puts the public safety at

05:23risk, right? But when you release that public safety threat back in the public, that means we

05:27got to go find him. When we find them, most likely he's with others. And if they're in the

05:32country illegally, they're coming too because we're not going to tell ICE to ignore the oath that you

05:37took to enforce immigration law and walk away from illegal alien like the last administration does.

05:41So if you want to force us in the communities, fine, we'll go, but collateral arrests will

05:46increase because we're going to run into illegal aliens while we're in the course of the most

05:49targets. So again, you want to, you want to decrease the collateral arrests, you want to

05:54decrease the non-criminals and let us in the damn jail. You said many are collateral.

05:58Can you put a number to that percentage? I don't have the number. I can tell you the majority were

06:01criminals, like criminal histories. And we've got to remember, we arrested, I think there were four

06:05people, convictions for murder, homicide. We arrested child sex predators. We arrested drug

06:12traffickers and gun traffickers. We seized guns. We seized drugs. That's the great thing about

06:16president Trump is all the government approach. It's, it's, it's a game changer because we do

06:21these operations. We find, find an illegal animal with narcotics DEA's right there to prosecute the

06:26case. We find the guns ATF's right there to prosecute the gun cases. And of course, ICE

06:30will continue to prosecute re-entries after re-entries after removal. So we get a lot of

06:35prosecutions out of these operations. Again, the reason why we're focused on sanctuary cities,

06:39because they're the most dangerous places because they release public safety threats back into the

06:43public. We're a cooperating jurisdiction. We don't have that much of a concern or,

06:48or that big a target of criminal aliens walking the streets. President Trump has made a commitment

06:53to American people. We're going to decrease illegal alien crime in the city. We're going

06:56to concentrate on public safety threats and national security threats. The data proves what

07:00we're doing. We're going to keep president Trump's promise to American people. He was given a

07:04mandate to do this number one issue, secure the border and deal with illegal alien crime in this

07:08country. And that's exactly what we're doing.

Border Czar Homan Responds To Families Who Say Deportees To Venezuelan Prison Not TdA

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