MARK KRIKORIAN: Tom Homan, thank you for joining us. Almost exactly eight years ago, we did our first interview with you when you were acting ICE director. That was at the Press Club, and Jessica Vaughan on our staff was the one who interviewed you. A lot of the issues are the same; some of them aren’t.
And so, I appreciate your willingness to sit down and talk with us about this stuff. The first thing I wanna start with is what was in the news, this traffic-stops issue. There was a pause, then apparently the president has unpaused. So what’s the story there?
TOM HOMAN: Well, look, I… Secretary Mullen made the decision to put a pause on the stops while we just analyze the last couple of shootings.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Mm-hmm.
TOM HOMAN: And, you know, can we do things better or not? Maybe everything’s fine, but he wanted to take a pause and make sure: Was the training in place? Is there something we can do to help protect ICE agents, since vehicle assaults are up 3,400 percent?
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: So can we do different things, right?
I mean, can we, you know… I’ll leave it up to ICE how they wanna do the operations, but like I said yesterday on one of the news shows, you can certainly arrest the guy before he gets in the car; you can arrest the guy when he gets out of the car. There are, you know, options out there.
But it’s a two-ton weapon sometimes.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: So I think he’s looking at what we can do. Are there options, or do we continue doing what we’re doing? But it’s a short pause. Of course, the president sent out a tweet last night, so I think it’s gonna be a relatively quick thing. And I personally think ICE agents are doing the right things.
They’re well-trained. As far as I know, if you go to our academy… I had my chief of staff pull the training curriculum on car stops. You know, there is some good training going on there, about the same as Border Patrol has. So we’ll see where it plays out, but that was the intent. The intent wasn’t to change the policy or stop vehicle stops.
Right. Right. That was never discussed. It was about taking a pause and just doing a review, ’cause people died. Let’s make sure that we’re, you know, in a good place.
MARK KRIKORIAN: So do you think the threat of this two-ton weapon is greater now because of all of these Democratic politicians basically giving permission almost to illegal aliens to evade law enforcement?
’Cause, like, look, when I see a flashing light in my rearview mirror—and it’s happened a couple times—you pull over. I mean, it’s… And I suspect most illegals, not the ones who are violent criminals but the ordinary working stiffs, that’s probably gonna be their first instinct, unless AOC tells them it’s okay to floor it or whatever.
TOM HOMAN: That’s a great question, ’cause I missed that yesterday during my interview. I wanted to get that out, but I didn’t have time. But yeah, I mean, they feel emboldened to resist ICE. I mean, you’ve seen me. I went after AOC several times ’cause she was having team meetings and virtual meetings telling, you know…
She says it’s advising people of their constitutional rights, but you and I both know it’s all about how to evade ICE. Right.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: And you see the signs at these ICE protests: “Resist,” you know? You know, ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. How many times have you heard that from Democratic representatives on the Hill?
TOM HOMAN: So the hateful rhetoric, along with the constant attacks on ICE, has emboldened illegal aliens: “I don’t have to comply. I’m gonna… resist.”
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: And so, in every incident—like what’s happened with the shootings—Democrats own a lot of that because of the hateful rhetoric… This is why the threats are up, you know, 9,000 percent.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Sure.
TOM HOMAN: It’s because of their language and their rhetoric and their lies. It’s not just the rhetoric about ICE. MARK KRIKORIAN, it’s about how they put fear in the immigrant community that ICE is separating families and arresting people in churches, arresting people in schools, arresting people in elementary schools, you know, and in hospitals.
It’s untrue. We haven’t done any of that.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: But that fear, that rhetoric, has emboldened people not to comply with ICE, and that has led to serious consequences.
MARK KRIKORIAN: One of the points you make all the time is that if ICE were in the county jails, then they’d have their hands full and probably wouldn’t have to do as many street operations.
There are still gonna have to be some, presumably, but not the same amount. The thing is, these two shootings—one was in Maine, and I’m not sure what the cooperation situation is, but the other one’s in Houston, and we’re in Texas, and Texas is not a sanctuary state. So this kinda thing, it’s… In other words, this kinda thing is likely to…
Is it likely to happen more because of sanctuary policies?
TOM HOMAN: Absolutely. It’s likely to happen more because of sanctuary policies, because we’re not allowed to arrest the bad guy, the criminal, in the safety and security of a county jail. I mean, your organization has done a lot of work on this.
And talk about sanctuary cities: I watch your staff’s testimony all the time about the damage sanctuary cities have done, and you guys are on the money. I mean, bottom line is, you know, it’s like what happened in Minnesota. The president sent me to Minnesota. I didn’t ask for Minnesota. He sent me there and wanted me to try to, you know, deal with-
MARK KRIKORIAN: De-escalate
TOM HOMAN: -the chaos. Yeah… and de-escalate. We came out of there with 84 county jails willing to assist us in one way or the other. So what happens? Rather than sending whole teams into the neighborhood looking for the criminal alien, one agent can arrest one bad guy. And for people saying, “Well, you surrendered ’cause, you know, you stopped large-scale enforcement,” wrong.
Instead of having a team of seven go and look for a guy, now one guy’s doing it. What’s that mean? That means six of the other guys can go look for more illegal aliens. So that was something that worked. But sanctuary cities, like, you know, God bless Todd Blanche. I know DOJ is suing them, taking them on.
There are radical judges fighting us on it, but we’re going to appeal it to the highest levels, and hopefully we win. Because it doesn’t make sense. If you’re in the country illegally and you’ve been arrested and locked in a jail cell by a local law enforcement officer, obviously he was a public-safety threat or flight risk. Why would you not contact us?
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: And now Governor Hochul- I went to her recently, and she says, “Well, I want local law enforcement to do local law enforcement work.” Exactly. I do, too. Right. So rather than arresting the same illegal alien 10 times, work with us. You arrest him one time because, not only will we remove him from the neighborhood and not be a public-safety threat anymore, and the cops won’t have to keep responding to the same guy, he’s gone.
It makes perfect sense.
MARK KRIKORIAN: So, the- you kind of alluded to this issue of, you know, after Minnesota: Were you stepping back from enforcement? The- how do you see the balance between the “worst of the worst” talk and the president’s mass deportation? Right. Because mass deportation, by definition, is not the worst of the worst, because the worst of the worst are a relatively small number, even though there are a lot of people.
TOM HOMAN: The worst of the worst is about prioritization. Prioritization doesn’t mean you forget about everybody else. We have not backed down from enforcement one iota, one inch. And how can I say that? Because last month, in June, ICE arrested more aliens than in any month in the history of the agency. So the arrests are still skyrocketing.
Deportations are still the highest ever. So we haven’t backed down on enforcement. And to prove my point, if you look at the recent data, at least 60… About 60 percent of those arrested are criminals, which means they have a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges, which means we found them in jail, right?
Right. Forty percent are non-criminal, which goes to the point that we are arresting non-criminals. We’re arresting overstayers. We’re arresting people with final orders who don’t have a criminal history.
MARK KRIKORIAN: I mean, in a sense-
TOM HOMAN: So, as a career law-enforcement guy, if I’m looking at the data, I like 60 percent criminal, 40 percent non-criminal.
I like that more than I’d like 40 percent criminal… 60 percent non-criminal. Right. Right. You know, if the percentage can be higher for those who are actually a public-safety threat, that’s a two-for-one. So I like it. But for anybody who says we’re only concentrating on the worst of the worst of the criminals, no, we’re not.
If you’re in the country illegally, you’re on the table, and we’re looking for you, and the data proves it.
MARK KRIKORIAN: And even that 40 percent- I mean, I don’t wanna make your case here for you, but a lot of those people are basically fugitives from final deportation orders. Yes. They’ve gotten their due process, they got their order, and they just blew it off.
So, and that’s a felony even though it’s not always prosecuted.
TOM HOMAN: And overstays too, you know. Right.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Yeah.
TOM HOMAN: You know, we gave them their due process.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Oh, that’s not a crime necessarily, though.
TOM HOMAN: Yeah, but they need to go home. But the bottom line is, the final orders—they had their due process.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: They’ve been ordered removed from the country. If you and I ignored a federal judge’s order, we’d be in prison. So yeah, you know, non-criminals are on the table. The data proves we’re arresting a lot of them, hundreds of thousands of them, so we’re gonna keep doing it. And like I said yesterday, people attacked the administration a few months ago ’cause the numbers were down.
Well, the department was shut down. Right. Congress shut the department down. But as soon as we got the reconciliation package, we turned up the heat, put our foot on the gas, and the numbers show that we’re really kicking some butt right now.
MARK KRIKORIAN: And arresting obviously is the first step, but are actual removals out of the country—on a plane or a bus or whatever—keeping up with that?
TOM HOMAN: Yeah. Well, it’s, we’re… There are still record removals. We removed more people this year than last year, you know, par for the course. And look, last year we had a record number of arrests. Historic. We made more arrests under the first year of Trump 47 than at any time in history. Made more deportations than at any time in history.
Am I happy with it? Yeah. Am I satisfied with it? No. We need more. We need more arrests and we need more deportations. That’s why, you know, when we got back in, I pushed for 100,000 beds. We- 100,000 beds. If you turn that bed over every 35, 40 days—the average length of stay—that means you turn the beds over 100,000 beds, you turn them over that often, that’s a million removals.
So that’s why we pushed for 100,000 beds. You know, that’s why-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Which you’re not at yet, right? Right. I mean-
TOM HOMAN: ICE, they’re about 70,000.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right. Okay.
TOM HOMAN: I’m pushing for more. It should’ve been done months ago, in my opinion. So I’m still pushing that button. But we also have a lot of agreements with other nations, you know, for third-country removals.
We’ve worked with DOW on removals, utilizing their assets, and we bought more planes for deportation operations. So look, the… We are set, and we gotta make sure we keep President Trump’s promise on mass deportations, and we’re all working toward that. When I read that, well, mass deportations are off the table, based on what?
Every time I read that, I get a little upset because that insults every ICE agent out there busting their butt every day to arrest these people. What people don’t understand is: record arrests and removals despite the fact, MARK KRIKORIAN, we have 80,000 habeas corpus-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right…
TOM HOMAN: Right? We got over 20 outstanding litigations. The stays have been put in place. We try to move Honduran children back to their parents, we get sued on that. So despite the open-borders advocates, ACLU, and all these well-funded groups suing us constantly; despite the fact that sanctuary cities have exploded; despite the fact that we got these habeas decisions and district-court judges are making decisions and putting those decisions in place across the country—which the Supreme Court already dealt with—they’re ignoring that.
We still have record arrests and removals. I wish people would take the totality of the circumstances into consideration when they make the statements, because I think ICE is, you know, again, last month was a record month, and that’s without DEA, ATF, FBI, and Border Patrol there with them. So these men and women really stepped up, and you’re gonna see us do more.
As we bring the new agents on, out of the 10,000 new agents, I think there’s about 7,000 on right now.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay.
TOM HOMAN: Again, took too long. We need to get them on faster. So once those agents get on, we got more resources to hit the streets with.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Now, training agents can be… I mean, it’s time-consuming, right? I mean, because years ago- you were probably here at the time- Marion Barry, remember him?
Mayor of Washington. They ramped up hiring for MPD, for the Washington police. They ended up cutting corners and they ended up with a lot of bad apples. What are ICE and Border Patrol, et cetera, doing to make sure that doesn’t happen?
TOM HOMAN: Border Patrol’s never changed their training.
Right. They’ve got the same training now that they had when I was there in 1984, and it’s really one of the hardest training things I’ve ever been through. But their training remains the same. ICE abbreviated some of the training. I wasn’t a fan of that. But now they’re… Those who went through abbreviated training are now doing post-academy training-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay
TOM HOMAN: -to cover whatever was abbreviated. Let’s see if we need to address this and that, and that’s happening right now. So we’re back on track when it comes to training. There was, like I say, some abbreviation. For instance, when we train at FLETC down at Glynco, Georgia, you know, you got the federal side of the house down there; they do most of the police training.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: But we also had police training, so they try to say, “Why are we doing double this? Let’s just let either the federal academy handle it or let our agency handle it.” So that’s where they abbreviated, but I’m a strong believer you can never be overtrained.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: Train as much as you can. And when you get out, continue that training.
Like in the Border Patrol in my day, after you graduated from the academy, you still had to train one day a week up till six months, and you had to take tests. Then after that, you trained one day a week until you took your 10-month test. So even though the academy was, you know, maybe five months long, you didn’t get a breath of air till 10 months because you had post-academy training.
That is a model we’re heading toward.
MARK KRIKORIAN: So, did you pass your Spanish test in Border Patrol?
TOM HOMAN: Absolutely, I passed it. I spoke a lot better then than I do now. I don’t speak much Spanish here, but yeah, I passed it.
MARK KRIKORIAN: One of the things that some people have criticized as kind of creating incentives for—or maybe misdirecting incentives for—ICE agents is this idea of arrest quotas. Are there arrest quotas? And how do you deal with that?
TOM HOMAN: There are no quotas. I mean, what I tell ICE is, “Arrest as many as you can. Just do it in a safe, well-planned way,” which we instilled. And people say, “Oh, targeted enforcement operations—that’s not the way to conduct business.”
Well, we’re doing targeted enforcement operations. We broke the all-time record last month. And what do I mean by that? That means when we go out and arrest people, know who you’re looking for. But one thing I like about sanctuary cities is… when you force me into the community, I’ll find the bad guy, but he’s gonna be with others who are coming, too.
So I just want well-planned operations. I wanna make sure agents are well-trained. I wanna make sure they understand, you know, if they’re going after a criminal, they know who that criminal is. Does he have weapons-violation charges? Does he… What’s his criminal history look like? Has he evaded arrest before?
Has he ever been arrested for, you know, assaulting a police officer? So I want to have as much information as possible when they go knock on that door. I mean, ICE does a good job of it. Many times they drill down when they’re doing the cases. They’ll know if there are children in the house.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: They’ll know if the guy has a pit bull in the backyard.
MARK KRIKORIAN: That’s one of the reasons that auto- that car stops, traffic stops, are preferable-
TOM HOMAN: Yeah.
MARK KRIKORIAN: -because you’re not going to the house where there could be a kid or-
TOM HOMAN: a pit bull. Well, exactly. That’s one of the good- that’s one of the points. But again, we can arrest him before he gets in the car, and we can arrest him when he gets in the car. But a lot of arrests happen on vehicle stops. Right. And that’s gonna continue. I mean, President Trump made it clear this morning. If there’s a week- or two-week pause, and that’s being reviewed right now, if that’s even how long that’s gonna last, if it lasts.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Mm-hmm.
TOM HOMAN: But the president made it clear this morning: He wants ICE out there doing their job, and that’s what’s gonna happen.
MARK KRIKORIAN: So one part of the job that ICE does is work-related enforcement, too—worksite, that sort of thing. That’s something I think I asked you about, like, in your first week on the job or something.
You were at The Heritage Foundation.
TOM HOMAN: Mm-hmm.
MARK KRIKORIAN: This is lo these many years ago.
TOM HOMAN: Yeah.
MARK KRIKORIAN: And you obviously have a commitment to it. Are we seeing worksite enforcement? I mean, maybe it’s happening, and they’re not covering it, but we’re not seeing it.
TOM HOMAN: Look, when I came back the second time, I’d been pushing-
MARK KRIKORIAN: After you retired and unretired the second time?
TOM HOMAN: Twice. Yeah. Twice. Anyway… Last year I said we need to fire up worksite-enforcement operations, because I know, not only can you arrest illegal aliens that cause a decrease in wages for the American worker, not only does it hurt legitimate businesses because they undercut their bids and it puts Americans out of work, but also because, number one, they’re in the country illegally; number two, companies are taking advantage and undercutting their American competition.
But also the criminal aspect, Mark. You and I both are aware of human trafficking, forced labor, peonage, and where do we find a lot of victims of trafficking? On worksites.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: So worksite needs to be a big part. I actually brought a couple of old-school boys back who I worked with, who did some of the largest worksite investigations, such as Tyson’s and the meatpacking plants.
So they got a good team over there. Matter of fact, just this morning we had a conference call on the status. They are doing it, but I want more. So we just had a status call this morning, and it’s moving.
MARK KRIKORIAN: So for a long time, HSI within ICE, which is the one that does these operations, there has been a sense there that they kind of would rather just do Customs stuff and arrest people making counterfeit NFL jerseys.
TOM HOMAN: It’s been made clear that they’re gonna do this.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay. That’s-
TOM HOMAN: And it was reiterated this morning: We need to do more of it. Again, even from the criminal aspect… Look, you know, I tell this story all the time, and I hope your listeners—people who listen to this program—this is a true story about me, and this is why I’m adamant about this.
So I put a new roof on my house several years ago. I had to call five or six companies until I had a company that guaranteed me a legal workforce, okay? Yeah. So while these people were coming to give me bids, this man and his son showed up. And he said, “I can’t replace the whole roof. I’m just looking to see if maybe I can repair it.” But after he saw the damage, he said, “No, I need a whole new roof.” So I asked him, you know, “You own a roofing company?” And here’s what he told me. He had a roofing company. He had almost 20 U.S.-citizen employees, but he couldn’t win a bid because he was paying an American worker, you know, 20, 25 bucks an hour to get on that roof, while everybody else was paying an illegal alien seven bucks an hour.
He couldn’t win the bids. So what happened? He laid off 20 U.S.-citizen employees and went out of business. Yep. So now he and his son are just going around doing repairs. That happens a thousand times a day across this country. That’s another reason worksite enforcement’s so important: Protect the American worker, keep the wages up.
On top of the criminal aspect, we need to do it.
MARK KRIKORIAN: The- There’s kinda two parts to that because I had said work-related enforcement. Some of it is actual worksite—you’re gonna do raids or whatever. I don’t know, they don’t like the word raid, but I mean, it’s a raid. That’s what it is. The other part of it—and that’s what I call body-armor enforcement, because, you know, it’s actual armed people.
There’s also what I call briefcase enforcement, which is no-match letters, audits of payroll, that kind of stuff that doesn’t involve- I mean, it may involve arrests eventually, but it’s more paperwork-related enforcement. What are you guys doing to step that sort of thing up, like no-match letters et cetera?
TOM HOMAN: Doing it, but we need to do a hell of a lot more of it. Matter of fact, the people I brought in, I asked them about a month ago to put together a plan. It doesn’t take an 1811 special agent to do an I-9 inspection.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: So create a warehouse. This is my idea. Create a warehouse, hire a bunch of smart contractors who can batch I-9 inspections.
Then once they see a lead, whether it’s criminal or administrative, you push that lead to HSI.
MARK KRIKORIAN: I see. Okay.
TOM HOMAN: And we’ll get a lot more done that way.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah.
TOM HOMAN: So I just think if it doesn’t take a badge and gun to do the work, have a contractor. We got plenty of money. Have a contractor do it, and that releases the badge and gun to do more badge and gun things.
TOM HOMAN: So that’s something that-
MARK KRIKORIAN: So what’s the status of that?
TOM HOMAN: -our guys are working. They’re working on a plan.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay.
TOM HOMAN: And- I forget who- you know, Derek Benner, a guy who used to be my deputy at one point at ICE. I wanna give him full credit. He came up with that and thought about it, so I’m stealing it.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay.
TOM HOMAN: So they’re working on that.
MARK KRIKORIAN: And I’ve- One of the things I heard from people at ICE is that, as part of the strategy, they’re looking at more strategically going after employers. So you’re not just raiding the Denny’s and arresting the dishwashers and then moving on to the next thing, which doesn’t really accomplish much.
TOM HOMAN: Well, it’s like anything-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Bring in IRS, Labor Department, et cetera. Again, what’s the current status of that?
TOM HOMAN: We want criminal charges. We just don’t wanna arrest the illegal aliens. We wanna hold employers who circumvent the law responsible.
MARK KRIKORIAN: That’s what I was gonna ask about, is that-
TOM HOMAN: Yeah, so this focus we got now, with this plan we got now, is all about criminal cases.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Mm-hmm.
TOM HOMAN: It’s about prioritizing the criminal cases to hold people responsible. That’s why we- you’re right- we have the IRS involved. We have many agencies. You know, no one’s better at chasing the money than IRS, and H-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: HSI has some great talent there too. But, you know, financial investigations, human-trafficking investigations, forced-labor, peonage investigations.
So we are concentrating on the criminal element, prioritizing them. But then again, we need to do other worksite enforcement. But when we have a lead or we develop information that there’s a criminal nexus here—or that money is being funneled toward terrorism or drug trafficking, which a lot of this is- you know, we need to prioritize those cases, and that is the plan that is written, and that’s the plan we’re asking to expand greatly right now.
MARK KRIKORIAN: And is part of this plan. I mean, I guess this is, in a sense, a kind of messaging or PR thing is part of the plan to try to get a couple of American employers handcuffed and perp-walked in front of cameras?
Because it just seems to me that would be very, very useful, both for deterrence purposes and for political purposes, which is not your department.
TOM HOMAN: If we have probable cause that a criminal violation occurred, we don’t care what color they are or what citizenship they are; they’re gonna be arrested.
I’m an equal-opportunity deporter, and we’re an equal-opportunity arrester. So if they’ve committed a worksite violation that is criminal, they’re gonna be charged. And DOJ is in these meetings along with me, and they understand that we have to do this.
MARK KRIKORIAN: One thing as part of this sort of briefcase-enforcement idea is these no-match letters, where the Social Security Administration sends letters to employers and says, “Hey, the payroll information you sent us doesn’t match our records.”
Back during the W administration, at the very end, ICE was going to accompany those Social Security letters with a list of things the employer should do to resolve it. And the point there was, if they didn’t do those things and ICE shows up, that’s proof of knowing employment of the illegal immigrants, which is always the problem.
Is ICE going to be working with Social Security and making that kind of thing happen again?
TOM HOMAN: Unfortunately, during the Biden administration, all those interagency partnerships and agreements went by the wayside. But now, you know, we’re working closely with the Social Security Administration, working very closely with the Department of Labor.
There were memorandums of understanding that didn’t allow some partnerships, but all those policies no longer exist, so we got a close working relationship with them. We’re working on it, like I say, every day. I mean, we’re, you know- you’d have to really- if you wanna dig into the weeds, you need to talk to ICE, ’cause I’m not in the weeds on what MOUs they have already signed, and how far the no-match and all this information has gone. But I know that we don’t have the roadblocks that we had for years. We certainly don’t have the roadblocks that the Biden administration put in place.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right. Right. So I’ll keep my eye out, then, for more employment-related, job-related enforcement.
TOM HOMAN: I will too.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay. Good. Well, they don’t work for me; they work for you. The last question I wanted to ask is, you know, there’s new management, obviously, at DHS. Is there a better working relationship now? How does that work with you and the secretary and all that?
TOM HOMAN: I get along with Mark Wayne Mullen very well.
We don’t always agree, and I’m glad we don’t. So, you know, I think the best result is when you bring different opinions and different mindsets to a meeting and you have that discussion. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, never claimed to be. A lot of my success is based on meeting with people who have great ideas, like I just said, and stealing ideas once in a while.
But Mark Wayne and I have a great relationship. We talk all the time, and I think the success of what we’re seeing right now—the numbers we’re seeing right now—shows that the partnership’s working. I mean, again, we need to get that out there more, but last month was a record month in the history of the agency.
Despite all the rhetoric out there that we’re not doing the work, the data proves otherwise. But Mark Wayne and I work well together. Again, we don’t always agree, but we’re moving it forward-
MARK KRIKORIAN: So what’s- it’s always hard to be a czar, isn’t it? Because you’re not DHS secretary or head of ICE or CBP or what have you. And the czar job sometimes doesn’t… I mean, it’s kind of- it sort of depends on the person to see how effective it is. Is it working, and should-
TOM HOMAN: Yes, it’s working-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay.
TOM HOMAN: -’cause I work for the President of the United States.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: And he trusts my judgment.
He trusts my counsel. He doesn’t really make a move without talking to me. He doesn’t have to do that, but we talk all the time. And I tell him, I think from my perspective, I got more time doing this job than anybody in the administration. No one’s got- no one’s done this for 40-plus years. I have.
And coming out of retirement twice, I still wonder sometimes when’s enough enough. But I got a great boss, and he listens to me. And we don’t always agree, but he listens to me. And I’ll give him the good, bad, and ugly, and he can decide what he wants to do. But I have a close relationship with probably everybody in this administration.
My closest relationship is with the President. But I’m very close to Mark Wayne Mullen. You know, we got a great team here. Stephen Miller, the architect. People can say what they want about Stephen Miller; he’s brilliant. The guy’s smart. We got a great team. The acting director of ICE right now, David Venturella, he trained me.
I brought Dave back because I knew Dave could make a difference. Rodney Scott, CBP- you know, I had a hand in bringing him back. Again, a career guy who knows what he’s doing. I thought it was best to bring in career guys who not only talked the talk but actually did the work.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Right.
TOM HOMAN: Rodney wore that uniform.
David Venturella did that work. I did the work. I was the first ICE director who actually came up through the ranks. So I always think: Bring somebody in who knows the job and has done the job.
MARK KRIKORIAN: The- just the last question here: You were kind of responding implicitly to- there’s a group called the Mass Deportation Coalition. They’re a lot of friends of the administration, but kind of applying tough love to try to get your numbers up.
Their goal, they’ve said, has been a million deportations-
TOM HOMAN: It’s my goal. You know, it-
MARK KRIKORIAN: this year. Is it likely this year, and if not, is it likely next year?
TOM HOMAN: Look, the likelihood is always good. I mean, that’s why I pushed for 100,000 beds, because we did the math. You know, the bed turns over every 35 to 40 days.
Do the math. I mean, now you got space for a million people. That’s why I pressed for expedited removals to be expanded. So we put everything in place to get to that number. Like, right now, since President Trump’s been in office, DHS reporting has already been over a million removals.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Yeah, but some of those are border returns, right? Or is it-
TOM HOMAN: Yeah, I think so.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Yeah,
TOM HOMAN: Yeah. But still, it’s more than any other president in the history of the country. But let… I’ll end with this. I want more, and we’re pushing for more, and we’re gonna get more, but it has to be done the right way.
Can’t racially profile. You got… Look, we gotta do things. We have the tools in our toolbox to do it. The only thing I hesitate saying—what the number’s gonna be in the future—’cause I don’t know how many more radical judges are gonna issue nationwide injunctions that are hard to overcome quickly.
I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m still trying to figure out how these radical district-court judges put in a nationwide injunction when the Supreme Court says they really can’t do that. But, you know, between the radical judges and these open-borders groups, and the constant mismashing of what we’re doing that’s driving the protests, that’s driving the attacks, that’s driving the lawsuits- I mean, the constant lies by the Democrats on the Hill, I…
That’s never gonna stop. And I wish it would, because that’s caused a lot of violence and a lot of bloodshed, and the bloodshed’s not over with if they keep this crap up. So I can tell you, as long as I’m here, I’m gonna give it 100 percent. That’s what I came back to do, and the team here is working their ass off to get it in place.
And, you know, God bless Border Patrol. They got the most secure border in the history of the nation right now, better than Trump 45. Data proves it. Right now I’m concentrating more on the northern border-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Hmm…
TOM HOMAN: -’cause I think the northern border’s a national-security issue that needs to be addressed.
And now that we got that locked down south, let’s put some work into the northern border. I’m working very closely with Rodney Scott on that. But we got a great team. They’re busting their asses. So I think you’re gonna see more in the future, and I want more, and we got the tools to do it, and we’re gonna keep doing it.
And Todd Blanche will keep fighting the lawsuits. We just gotta win a few of these lawsuits. Get ’em to the highest court in the land, and I think we’re gonna be in better shape.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Tom Homan, thank you very much.
TOM HOMAN: I appreciate it, Mark, I really appreciate it, and keep up the good work.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Hopefully it won’t be another seven or eight years before we do another interview.
TOM HOMAN: No, no. I- you got- You’re not gonna find me.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Well, that’s true. You’ll retire a third time and we’ll-
TOM HOMAN: I’ll be fishing someplace and-
MARK KRIKORIAN: Yeah. Third time is the charm, right?
TOM HOMAN: You got it. You got it, sir.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Okay, great. Thank you.
TOM HOMAN: Thank you Mark. We’re good?
MARK KRIKORIAN: Yep.