Karoline Leavitt Torches The Left’s Hypocrisy On Deportations

At her first briefing since the Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democratic leaders for refusing to enforce federal immigration law. She described Pretti as an armed left-wing agitator and said the administration’s message was clear: the Biden-era approach to immigration enforcement is finished.

Leavitt accused Democrats and hard-left activists of trying to obstruct the mandate voters gave President Trump, while federal immigration officers are carrying out the will of the American people. She noted that Trump has condemned the “vile” treatment of those officers and called the resistance to enforcement deadly.

She also outlined what the White House sees as the path forward in Minnesota, stressing cooperation from state and local officials who have shielded illegal aliens. Trump spoke with Gov. Tim Walz on Monday in a productive conversation, Leavitt said, noting the two were on a similar wavelength about next steps.

The administration’s demands include turning over all criminal illegal immigrants in state and local custody for immediate deportation, requiring local police to transfer all illegal aliens they arrest to federal authorities, and mandating cooperation with federal law enforcement in apprehending suspects. 

It was also announced that White House Border Czar Tom Homan has been assigned to oversee federal immigration efforts in Minnesota and will report directly to Trump. 

When a reporter questioned Homan’s assignment, that’s when Leavitt delivered the knockout punch.

She pulled up a 2016 Washington Post article with the headline:

“Meet the man the White House has honored for deporting illegal immigrants.”

The piece praised Homan’s work under Barack Obama. 

What he said https://t.co/Kpz3GRou7H

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2026

Homan was serving as executive associate director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. He was one of only three Department of Homeland Security career executives selected for the 2015 Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Service.

The award is the nation’s highest civil service honor, given annually by the president to top career executives and senior professionals who demonstrate “strength, integrity and commitment to public service.” According to figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, between fiscal years 2013 and 2015, under Homan’s leadership, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations deported more than 920,000 illegal immigrants from the United States. That figure includes 534,000 individuals with criminal convictions, setting multiple agency records. 

“Thomas Homan deports people. And he’s really good at it,” the Washington Post wrote at the time. “Homan is the Washington bureaucrat in charge of rounding up, detaining, and kicking illegal immigrants out of the country. As Americans fight over whether the next president should build a wall on the Mexico border to keep migrants out or protect millions of them from deportation, Homan is actually hunting undocumented immigrants down right now, setting strategy for 8,000 officers on the front lines.”

The article continued:

He was honored last week with the government’s highest civil service award, bestowed on federal leaders whose work gets “extraordinary” results. According to his bosses at the Department of Homeland Security, not only did Homan successfully handle an unexpected surge of unaccompanied children and families who have streamed here from Central America across the Southwest border, but last year his operations set records for the share of illegal immigrants expelled from the U.S. who had criminal records.

Many of President Obama’s immigration policies have been unpopular with immigration advocates who say he has not done enough to overhaul a system that relies on deportations. But Homeland Security officials were intent on plugging Homan’s success.

Leavitt held up a printout of the article for the media to see, with the headline, “Meet the man the White House has honored for deporting illegal immigrants.”

“And I would remind everyone in this room that it was former President Barack Hussein Obama who awarded a medal to Mr. Homan. So he’s obviously very qualified. He has the full trust and faith of the president. He will continue to have these meetings in the hopes that ICE and local law enforcement can cooperate and work together to have successful immigration enforcement, as we’ve seen in almost every other state across the country.”

🚨BARACK OBAMA HONORED TOM HOMAN!

Washington Post headline from 2016L “Meet the man the White House has honored for deporting illegal immigrants”

“It was former President Barack Hussein Obama who awarded a medal to Mr. Homan.”

Same deportation policies, new Trump Derangement. pic.twitter.com/gPfBXORT37

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 26, 2026

 Homan did the same work under Obama that he’s doing under Trump. The difference is that Obama gave him a medal, and the left cheered. Now, under Trump, the same deportation-focused approach draws outrage from Democrats and breathless condemnation from the media. The only thing that changed was the man in the Oval Office.