White House designated border czar Tom Homan said in an interview published on Wednesday that the administration is working to increase the number of deportations amid a slowdown following a leadership shakeup.
“We are after everyone, but again, you’ve got to prioritize those who are the biggest threats to our national security, public safety,” Homan told the Washington Examiner, referring to illegal immigrants who are being targeted for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Homan acknowledged that “numbers are slightly down, but there’s a plan” within the administration to “get them back up and even higher.”
“Am I happy with the numbers right now? No, I want more, too. Even though numbers are historic, I want more.”
He highlighted the administration’s record on deportations.
Since President Donald Trump took office for the second time, Homan said, a “total of 800,000” illegal immigrants have been deported “out of the country.”
“If you take 60 percent of that, criminals, hundreds of thousands of public safety threats, have been removed from this country. Name another president who’s done that.”
The border czar noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and border operations, was mired in a shutdown for months in the wake of two shootings in Minneapolis that involved federal agents earlier this year. Democratic lawmakers said they would not fund DHS unless assurances were made that ICE officers would be required to wear cameras and remove their masks.
“Lawmakers got angry. I was up on Capitol Hill, my chief of staff, to a dozen different meetings with Democrats and Republicans, and everything they threw out was about Minneapolis, about, you know, masks, about identifiers, about body cameras, about warrantless arrests, about roving patrols,” Homan said on Wednesday.
Several months ago, the Trump administration replaced DHS Secretary Kristi Noem with Markwayne Mullin, who has so far taken a more subdued approach compared with Noem.
Homan suggested that the White House should be putting out more data on immigration-related figures.
“I just had a meeting this morning. Secretary Mullin is committed to putting stats [out] on a more regular basis, which wasn’t being done prior,” Homan told the news outlet. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be sharing that with the American people, and I think Markwayne Mullin’s working on that, along with the White House.”
Earlier this month, Homan told the Daily Signal that cities and jurisdictions with “sanctuary” policies, meaning they have ordinances that preclude law enforcement from working with ICE on deportations, could see further deployments of ICE agents.
The border czar’s comment came as Trump signed an order Tuesday that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers.