The Patriot Post® · Homan's Master Class on Immigration Enforcement
Yet another Schumer Shutdown looms at midnight tonight if Senate Democrats don’t stop blocking six appropriations bills. Fortunately, a deal was reached last night to end the Chuck Schumer-led Democrat obstruction. Unfortunately, it puts funding for the Department of Homeland Security on, er, ICE.
DHS funding will be pulled from the larger appropriations package for the Pentagon, the State Department, and other agencies. Instead, DHS funding will remain at current levels for two weeks as the two parties hammer out a compromise.
“This is a bad deal,” warned South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
President Donald Trump disagreed, writing on Truth Social, “Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote.”
The two parties had been steadily working toward passing all of the year’s appropriations bills by tonight’s deadline until the not-so-good-guy Alex Pretti was killed while resisting arrest by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis last weekend. That followed the death of Renee Good earlier this month after she disobeyed ICE agents’ orders and accelerated her car with an agent in front of it. Democrats quickly seized on those deaths to demand “reforms” before agreeing to funding.
According to CBS News:
Schumer outlined his caucus’ demands, which he said include ending roving patrols [and] tightening rules governing the use of warrants and requiring ICE coordination with state and local law enforcement. He said Democrats also want to enforce accountability, demanding a uniform code of conduct and accountability to hold federal agents to the same use-of-force policies as state and local law enforcement. Finally, Schumer said Democrats want a “masks off, body cameras on” policy for federal agents.
I’m sure rabid leftists would never do anything to target officers they identified because they were no longer wearing masks. And since when were Democrats anti-mask, anyway? As for the rules on warrants, Democrats aim for ICE to be snowed under a mountain of unnecessary paperwork and thwarted by left-wing judges.
Meanwhile, Border Czar Tom Homan arrived in Minneapolis to make a few needed moves to clean up a mess. He began by meeting with state and local Democrats — Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and others — to look for common ground. (Yeah, I know, but he has to try, and I’ll come back to that.)
On a radio show on Tuesday, President Trump also addressed cooperation, saying he told Walz and Frey, “Just give us your criminals, and if you give us your criminals, it all goes away.”
Yesterday, Homan held a press conference to lay out the strategy.
“I do not want to hear that everything that’s been done here has been perfect. Nothing’s ever perfect. Anything can be improved on, and what we’ve been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient, by the book,” Homan said. “The mission is going to improve because of the changes we’re making internally.”
“We’re not surrendering our mission at all,” Homan argued. “We’re just doing it smarter.”
He also hopes the mission improves with a little “commonsense cooperation” from Minnesota authorities. If that happens, he said, it will allow for the “drawdown on the number of people we have here.” Why does local and state cooperation matter? “I think anybody here with common sense would say it’s safer to arrest a public safety threat in the safety and security of a jail,” Homan explained. “Let ICE officers operate in the safety and security of a jail more than on the street.”
Cooperation shouldn’t stop with authorities. To the yahoos cursing and obstructing agents, Homan said, “You have the right to protest. I’m just asking you to keep it peaceful. But threatening law enforcement officers, engaging in impeding and obstruction and assault is never OK. And there will be zero tolerance. You interfere, impede, assault ICE officers, you will be arrested.”
He also noted that there will be a shift in law enforcement focus. “The prioritization [is] going to be criminal aliens, public safety threats, and national security threats.” That does not mean, however, that others are off the hook. In fact, that led to Homan’s excellent explanation of the total breakdown of the Rule of Law under Joe Biden:
If you’re in the country illegally, you’re never off the table. But you know, prioritization doesn’t mean you forget about it. If the message we send is “You enter this country legally; it’s a crime. Don’t worry about it. You can have your due process show up in court, not show up in court. Get ordered or move. Don’t worry about it. Unless you commit a serious crime, you’re good to go.” If that’s the message we send to the world, you’re never going to fix this problem.
The most vulnerable people in the world will make that dangerous journey like they did under the Joe Biden administration. Over 4,000 aliens died making that journey. And again, a significant increase in sex trafficking. Because when they did that and opened those borders up, saying, “We’re not going to detain you, we’re going to give you free healthcare, we’re going to fly you to the city of your choice, put you in a free hotel room, give you three meals a day, and give you work authorization. We’re just going to bring you in.” And when they did that, they sent a message to the whole world [that] you can come and do this.
And what happened? They overwhelmed the men and women on the Border Patrol. … You don’t think the criminal cartels had a field day with that? They created gaps for the cartels to do their activity. And that’s why you’ve seen the rise in fentanyl overdoses. That’s why you saw the rise in sex trafficking.
Later, he noted that a quarter of a million Americans have died from fentanyl. In other words, this is way bigger than Good and Pretti.
Also, notes PJ Media’s Catherine Salgado, “The Biden administration lost track of over 320,000 illegal alien children and deliberately placed some unaccompanied minors with human traffickers. Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Travis Wolfe, Nate Baker, Rachel Morin, Larisha Thompson, David Lee, Ivory Smith, and Kayla Hamilton are just a few victims of illegal alien killers.”
All of that violence and death is on the hands of Joe Biden and his administration.
“Why are we here?” Homan rephrased a CNN question. “Four years of an open border,” Homan said. “Let’s not forget — for four years we were told, ‘The border is secure.’ … We all knew it wasn’t.”
Now, back to that reason for cooperation I mentioned above. A viral clip has been making the rounds on social media this week of Barack Obama in a 2010 speech, and as podcaster Joe Rogan marveled, he “sounds so Republican.”
“Ultimately,” Obama said, “our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.”
How serious was Obama? He gave the 2015 Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Service to a guy named Tom Homan for his work securing the border.
Tom Homan’s entire press conference is a master class in professionalism and handling the media.