Former ICE Chief Says Border Crisis is a National Security Crisis for the United States
Jose Nino
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Tom Homan, who previously served as the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), criticized the Biden regime’s border security policies. He views these border policies as lax and contends that the increase in illegal immigration “is on purpose.”
Homan served as the ICE chief from 2017 to 2018. He described the border crisis as one that encompassed “public safety, public health, and national security crises”, per a report by Adam Michael Molon at The Epoch Times.
“People are going to say, ‘Okay, illegal aliens are crossing the border. They say they’re going to send them to see the judge.’ There’s more to this. What’s the ugly underbelly of this?”
Homan has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Biden regime’s open borders policies. Back in October, he co-authored a piece with former Acting Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Mark Morgan at The Washington Examiner where they observed, “In just 18 months, Customs and Border Protection has recorded more than 4 million apprehensions— more than the previous four fiscal years combined. The encounters since last October have totaled more than 2.7 million, plus nearly 600,000 known got-aways and likely hundreds of thousands who entered completely undetected.”
“They’ve arrested 114 known and suspected terrorists who tried to get into the country since Joe Biden’s been in the White House … Border Patrol’s arrested people from 161 countries, [and] some of those countries sponsor terrorism,” Homan said to The Epoch Times.
“Since Joe Biden’s taken office, there’s a recorded over 1 million got-aways based on camera traffic, drone traffic, sensor traffic. Recorded got-aways. So, if they arrest 114, how many of that 1 million came from a country that sponsors terrorism and is coming to do us harm?”
He continued, “Sadly, I think it’s going to take a national security incident to wake them up.”
Homan is of the view that the border crisis “is on purpose,” and has been created by policies that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the Biden regime.
“[Secretary Mayorkas] has the same data I have,” declared Homan, who also served as the chief of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations during Barack Obama’s administration.
“When [Mayorkas] was a deputy secretary [at DHS] in 2014, 2015 under Obama, he was deputy secretary under [then-DHS secretary] Jeh Johnson. When we had a thousand entrants a day, Jeh Johnson called us all and said, ‘What the hell’s going on? This is a bad day.’ A thousand,” Homan added.
“Now they’ve got seven, eight thousand and [Mayorkas is] saying the border’s secure.”
“How did we stop it in 2014, 2015? We built detention facilities. We held [illegal aliens] long enough to see a judge. 90 percent lost, we put them on an airplane and sent them home, boarding them as well,” Homan continued.
“[Mayorkas] was the deputy secretary back then, he knew what we did. Now he’s the secretary. What is he doing now? He’s not using detention facilities, he’s shutting them down. They’re releasing [illegal aliens]. Many of them are released without even a court date, so they’re not seeing a judge … He’s doing the complete opposite of what worked in 2014, 2015.”
“This isn’t mismanagement, this isn’t incompetence. This is on purpose,” Homan proclaimed.
Mayorkas has claimed that the border is safe and has defended DHS’s performance in light of the record levels of illegal alien border crossings.
“The immigration system, our laws, have not been reformed for more than 40 years. The problem from administration to administration, regardless of party, is the fact that we are fundamentally working within a broken immigration system, and that is the foundational challenge, with respect to the border,” Mayorkas stated in early December.
Homan noted that the Biden regime is loosening border controls for electoral purposes. Well-established voting patterns show that immigrants are a reliable Democratic Party constituency. Homan declared that the Biden regime’s open borders policies are “all about future political power.”
“They truly believe [illegal aliens] are future Democratic voters, number one, and number two, they certainly perceive a future political benefit. Because remember, President Biden also overturned Trump’s census rule,” Homan remarked.
“Now illegal aliens will be counted in the census. So look, already five million have crossed the border [during the Biden administration] … many will flock to sanctuary cities that are protected, which are going be counted in that jurisdiction, which will result in more seats for the Dems.”
Homan called attention to how “millions of Americans … don’t even realize there’s a crisis on the border.” He is of the view that citizens need to become better informed and educated on the border security issue.
“I’ll say it a thousand times, regardless of what your opinion is on illegal immigration, when you create a crisis this big, you create a public safety crisis, a public health crisis, and a national security crisis,” he stated.
“You can’t turn a blind eye to it.”
Homan took the Biden regime to task for its “alternatives to detention” (ATD) program, better known as “catch and release.” Under this policy, the majority of illegal aliens are released into the US interior as they wait for theircourt dates.
“Not only are they letting [illegal aliens] in, they’re setting them up so they’ll never be removed because they’re not in custody,” Homan observed.
According to Molon, the number of illegal aliens in the Catch and Release program is quite frightening which he detailed below: “There are currently about 378,000 illegal aliens under the ATD program, according to ICE’s latest statistics. Most of them, about 290,000, are monitored by ICE through an app known as SmartLINK. Nearly 70,000 are not monitored by any technology, while 16,000 are monitored through telephone calls, and nearly 7,000 are monitored by GPS.”
According to a 2022 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office that studied the ATD program from 2015 to 2020, roughly a quarter of the illegal aliens subjected to the program fled the address where they were staying “and could not be located,” which includes 33% in fiscal year 2020.
Per a 2020 DHS Enforcement Lifecycle Report, illegal aliens encountered from 2014 to 2019 who were held in DHS custody for the entire time before going through court proceedings were repatriated 98% of the time. Only 0.5% received court orders allowing them to stay in the US.
1% of illegal aliens subjected to continuous detention received removal orders from the court that were not carried out by ICE.
By contrast, illegal aliens who were never detained ended up being repatriated 30% of the time. Meanwhile, 15% received court orders letting them stay, whereas 55% of the cases were not solved at the time of the publication of the report.
“The detention pattern yielding the greatest share of unresolved cases were encounters initially placed in detention but then released prior to a final enforcement outcome,” the report continued.
“These ‘partially detained’ encounters resulted in repatriations just 3 percent of the time and relief just 12 percent of the time, with 85 percent still unresolved, including 18 percent with unexecuted removal orders.”
“They know this,” Homan stated. “They know most [illegal aliens] will lose their case, because based on the immigration court data, and they know based on the Homeland Security Lifecycle Report, if [illegal aliens are] not detained, they won’t be removed at all … That’s why they’re releasing them.”
He continued, “No one’s talking about this…if the American people knew … I think a lot of people sit at home and say, ‘Well, if [illegal aliens] lose their case they’ll be ordered removed and ICE will be able to remove them.’ No they can’t. Because they won’t find them.”
No doubt that there’s a major crisis at the border. For decades, the ruling class has been committed to an open borders agenda for the purpose of acquiring cheap labor and cheap votes. The American people and the greater Historic American Nation ultimately lose out under this open borders arrangement.
Patriot immigration reform is an absolute must during this crisis moment. If America fails to secure its borders, it’s destined to become a multicultural hellscape.
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