President Donald Trump's border czar Tom Homan was grilled by reporters in Minnesota after announcing a shift in tactics for federal immigration agents.
The president dispatched Homan to the state and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demoted Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino following the fatal shootings of two citizen observers this month in Minneapolis, and the border czar told reporters that the mission was intended “to regain law and order" by focusing on subjects who illegally entered the country and committed crimes.
“President Trump want’s this fixed, and I’m going to fix it,” Homan said.
CNN's Shimon Prokupecz pressed Homan to explain who had made the decisions that sparked the violence that he was seemingly sent to tamp down as political pressure mounts on the administration.
"How did we get here in terms of, you had Greg Bovino who was the face of this immigration operation?" Prokupecz said. "The mission, as you say, to having Border Patrol agents in the interior of this country stopping U.S. citizens, asking them for ID, creating this fear, in places like Chicago and now here. And then, finally, it took really the death of Alex Pretti for us to get here. How did that happen? Who made the decisions to allow this kind of operation to proceed in this way and to create such fear?"
Homan took the question as an opportunity to bash Trump's predecessor.
"Well, look, the Border Patrol last four years under Joe Biden, we had an open border where 10,[000], 12,000 people a day are coming across the border," Homan claimed. "Border Patrol got overwhelmed, which means we send thousands of ICE agents down there to help deal with that humanitarian crisis, help secure the border. Now we have millions of people released in this nation, many unvetted. Now we got to find them. Before the Big Beautiful Bill, we had a total just under 5,000 deportation officers to look for millions of people, many in public safety threats."
He then claimed demonstrators posed threats against immigration agents that justified the violent crackdown.
"So yes, we needed Border Patrol to come and help on our mission now, and reason for the massive deployment is because of the threats, because of the violence, our officers need to be protected," Homan said. "If I'm on operation, an arrest team, I'm going to a house, I've got to be busy with that guy, the dangerous guy, and I can't keep looking over my shoulder. What's happening outside the house? So we brought extra resources in to provide that security, and as I said, as we drill down on these great agreements, we got this great understanding we have means less so we can draw down those resources. When the violence decreases, we can draw down those resources."
"But based on the discussions I've had with the governor and the [attorney general], we can start drawing down those resources," he added. "As far as those looking for public safety that's being released and do it in the jail with much, much less people. So the drawdown is going to happen based on these agreements. But the drawdown can happen even more if the hateful rhetoric and the interference will stop. So Border Patrol, I was a Border Patrol agent. These men and women are patriots, God bless, God bless them. They're here to help us."
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