Former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan says former President Donald Trump can carry out a “historic deportation operation” but needs “every Republican in Congress” to back him by passing major legislation and providing huge funding.
In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot Breitbart News DailyHoman said the process must begin with ridding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of “deep state” actors – political appointees who work to keep officials from doing their jobs under President Joe Biden.
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“I think we know who the deep state is, and it starts with Alejandro Mayorkas and the political appointees that he’s put in each of the agencies. So we start with the political appointees, because they work for the administration, they don’t work for the agencies,” Homan said. “They’re there to monitor the agencies and make sure they can’t do what they’re supposed to do.”
“ICE is ending its detention activities and handing them over to NGOs… It’s not hard, you just start with the political appointees and work your way down from there,” Homan continued.
Homan said that after the congressional purge, Republicans in the House and Senate must pass HR2, a major border security bill introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), which would overhaul how the federal government more strictly enforces the border, deports illegal immigrants and effectively roots out asylum fraud.
H.R.2 was passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives but was not considered in the Senate.
“We know it will work. Why will it work? Because it was part of President Trump’s policy and we’ve proven it works,” Homan said.
“The question is, even with Trump’s policies, how many beds will ICE have? How much will Congress give ICE to buy more detention beds? How much will Congress give ICE to expand transportation contracts to move people out of the country? What will Congress allow ICE to do in terms of law enforcement resources?” Homan asked rhetorically. “Therein lies the problem. We need both the House and the Senate to get around this.”
Homan said House and Senate Republicans should not repeat what they did in 2017 and 2018, when Republicans controlled both chambers but did little to improve border security. Instead, tax cuts were passed, making them a focal point of Republican lawmakers’ agenda.
“Even if the House and Senate remain, hopefully they can do a much better job than they did during the first two years of the Trump administration, when both houses would not cooperate on closing the border and Trump had to sign executive orders because Republicans would not support him,” Homan said.
“Given everything that’s happened in this country over the last four years, I expect every Republican in Congress, every Republican in the Senate to support this president,” Hohmann continued. “And if that doesn’t happen, it’s going to be hard for him to succeed.”
Homan said that in practice, Trump needs to be at the helm of these deportation efforts because he has the power to persuade foreign leaders to return their citizens home.
“People need to understand that unless they’re a Mexican citizen, you can’t just arrest someone this morning and deport them this afternoon. You have to hold them long enough to get travel documents from their home country and have their home country recognize that they’re a citizen,” Homan said. “Otherwise countries like China won’t accept them.”
Homan said Trump already has a history of pressuring resistant countries to bring their citizens home.
“A historic deportation operation… this requires a strong president like President Trump. For example, when we carried out the operation and arrested about 500 MS-13 gang members, I told the president that it would be difficult to deport these people to El Salvador, especially because of the resistance they will face against gang members,” Homan said. “It took 48 hours, two days, for President Trump to call El Salvador and tell them either deport their gang members or we will cancel every dollar of their international aid. They came right to the negotiating table.”
“He did the same thing with other Central American countries. Mexico didn’t want to be in the Remain in Mexico program. They said no,” Homan said. “And then Trump said, ‘We’re going to put billions of dollars of tariffs on you.’ And now all of a sudden Mexico is in.”
“This is the largest deportation operation ever, but there are still many hurdles to overcome before it can be successful,” Homan said.
There are currently between 11 million and 22 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, with hundreds of thousands more arriving across the southern border each month under President Joe Biden’s administration. Currently, the vast majority of people who arrive at the border are released onto U.S. soil.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter. here.
