An accusation of not caring about migrant children infuriated former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan to such an extent that it prompted thoughts of a physical confrontation.
“I thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right in the middle of the room because when you tell someone who has spent their career saving lives that I don’t care about dying children and I’m a racist, that’s where I broke,” Homan told the right-leaning Fox News over the weekend.
Homan was referring to comments made by Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) during a House hearing on Friday.
When questioning Homan, García accused the former ICE chief of not caring about illegal immigrant children “because these children don’t look like children that are around you.”
“How can you possibly allow this to happen under your watch? Is it because these children don’t look like children that are around you?” García asked, adding, “Have you ever held a deceased child in your arms?”
Homan responded angrily to García’s line of questioning: “First of all, your comments are disgusting!”
Thomas Homan to @Repchuygarcia: “Your comments are disgusting…I’ve served my country 34 years and yes, I held a five-year-old boy in my arms…for you to sit there and insult my integrity and my love of my country and for children, that’s why this whole thing needs to be fixed.” pic.twitter.com/gGA7qW4RgU
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 12, 2019
“I’ve served my country for 34 years and yes, I held a five-year-old boy in my arms … and I knelt down beside him and said a prayer for him because I knew what his last 30 minutes of his life were like,” he added. “No one has experienced what I’ve experienced. I saw many dead bodies coming across this border.”
García has not responded since the hearing, though he continues attacking the Trump administration on Twitter, recently calling the president “racist and divisive” and calling on him to “stop criminalizing desperation” amid the left-wing push for open borders.
Today in Chicago, we told the Trump administration: Stop criminalizing desperation! Now is the time to stand up and stand together. When @realDonaldTrump tries to intimidate us, we don’t run! #StopDeportationsNow #DecriminalizeDesperation pic.twitter.com/RT9cqGJO6i
— Congressman Chuy García (@RepChuyGarcia) July 13, 2019
Homan and multiple Democrat representatives got into testy exchanges during the hearing.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tried questioning Homan about a memo Homan signed while head of ICE recommending “zero tolerence” on the border crisis.
“I recommended zero tolerance,” Homan told the lawmaker after a back-and-forth.
“Which includes family separation,” she countered.
“The same as it is with every U.S. citizen parent that gets arrested with a child,” Homan quickly replied.
Ocasio-Cortez went quiet for a few seconds, before saying, “Zero tolerance was interpreted as the policy that separated children from their… .”
Interrupting, Homan replied, “If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child in the car, I’m gonna be separated.”
“When I was a police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I separated that father from his home,” he added.
Ocasio-Cortez replied, “Mr. Homan, with all due respect, legal asylees are not charged with any crime.”
Before she had finished the sentence, Homan responded, “When you’re in this country illegally, it’s violation 8, United States Code 1325.”
“Seeking asylum is legal,” she claimed.
Exchange between @RepAOC and Thomas Homan
Rep. @AOC: “The recommendation, of the many that you recommended, you recommended family separation.”
Homan: “I recommended zero tolerance.”
Full video here: https://t.co/9wyiibRxwv pic.twitter.com/RoM4kBMJVq
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 12, 2019
“If you want to seek asylum, you go through a port of entry,” he responded. “Do it the legal way. The Attorney General of the United States has made that clear.”
Homan told Fox that Democrats kept making false statements and accusations and would interrupt him when he tried to respond.
He said the hearing was “political theater.”
“They didn’t want to hear the truth. They wanted to push their narrative and not let me speak,” he said.
“They wanted me to get up and walk out and I wasn’t gonna give that to them.”
Epoch Times reporter Simon Veazey contributed to this report.
