Border czar Tom Homan struggled to explain why Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had "more reason" to wear masks after spending several days with their faces uncovered at the nation's airports.
Just days after President Donald Trump deployed ICE to "help" TSA agents during the partial government shutdown, Homan insisted they needed the masks more than ever because of criticism from Democratic lawmakers.
"The same people who pushed this negative narrative against ICE agents are the same ones who want to take the masks off," he told The Charlie Kirk Show on Tuesday. "They're a reason we're wearing the masks. Their hateful rhetoric has convinced a small percentage of people who are already nuts to take violent acts against ICE officers."
"So, you know, if their hateful rhetoric doesn't decrease," he continued. "Threats will continue to rise, assaults will continue to rise, puts our officers in great danger, and it gives us more reason to try to protect themselves and their families."
Homan argued that the Department of Homeland Security had ordered ICE to enforce laws enacted by Congress.
"If they don't like it, change the law," he insisted. "If they want to call us Nazis for enforcing the law that they wrote, what's that make them? They created the law."
"So we're going to keep enforcing laws as mandated by Congress," he added. "That's appropriated funding to do this. That's exactly what we're going to do. The American people have spoken. They put Donald Trump in the Oval Office to enforce immigration law and secure the border."