President-elect Donald Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, has vowed to impose harsh retribution on sanctuary city leaders who threaten to prevent immigration authorities from carrying out planned mass deportations, making clear “Don't test us,” he says.
Homan visited the border in Eagle Pass, Texas, with Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday and said, “Let me be clear: We just finished a massive illegal immigration crisis at the border, so there will be mass deportations.'' ” he said.
“If you don't, what choice do you have? Leave them alone? Because if you leave them alone, you'll never fix the borders. You're sending a message to the whole world. Illegal entry is a crime, ignore court orders…We tell the whole world that it's okay to enter this country illegally, never do it. Please,” he added.
Homan warned leaders who threaten to interfere with Immigration and Customs Enforcement: “Don't cross that line.”
“Intentionally harboring illegal immigrants or hiding them from immigration authorities is a felony. Don't try us.”
One of those leaders is Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who recently mobilized local police officers and 50,000 residents “stationed at county lines” to stop immigrants in sanctuary cities from Trump's mass deportations. He promised to protect them from the turmoil and called it the “Tiananmen Square moment.”
“More than we have, [federal agents] If you stationed them at the county line to keep them out, you'd have 50,000 Denver residents there,” Johnston recently told The Denver Post.
“It's like a Tiananmen moment…right?” he said, referring to the famous video of the confrontation between Chinese students and government tanks in China's Tiananmen Square during the 1989 uprising.
“You'd have all the Highland moms who came because of immigration, and we don't want to mess with them,” Johnston said of Denver, which is ready to go to the mat against the federal government. He talked about the residents.
Homan recently told the Post that he hopes the incoming Trump administration will file a lawsuit and withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities.
If that doesn't work, he said, the White House will “flood” ICE officers into these areas and wait outside local jails for illegal immigrants to be released.
Homan said the administration will prioritize criminal illegal immigrants first for deportation.
Of the approximately 7.8 million undocumented immigrants in the United States who are under surveillance by federal immigration authorities, 662,586 are convicted felons or have criminal charges pending.
In New York City alone, “it will take a lifetime” to deport immigrant criminals in New York City, the head of ICE's field office in the Big Apple recently told the Post.
