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Washington Examiner homeland security reporter Anna Giaritelli spoke with Homan on Monday, May 18, about his work thus far and where President Donald Trump intends to take his immigration enforcement plans from here. Below is a transcript of the conversation, which can be found on the Washington Examiner’s YouTube page.
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GIARITELLI: Number-wise, where do arrests, illegal immigrant arrests, and deportations stand since Trump took office?
HOMAN: Arrests are around 600,000, 641,000, something like that. Deportations over 800,000 if you know, you’re counting the Border Patrol, too. We’re trying to do the same thing we did during Obama administration, putting the numbers together, but it’s a record number of arrest deportations. We did more in first year in Trump than any here in history, and a lot of people want to compare President Trump to the Eisenhower administration. Look, if you count the self-removals, either through the CBP Home app or those that left, I mean, we’re in millions, you know, over 3 million removals, and some people, you know, argue with me, ‘You can’t count self removals.’ Oh, really? Because that was a part of the plan from the very beginning. We knew if we surged unlimited ICE resources in the interior, and we do these operations that that will force those that are here illegally to leave on their own, because we sent the messaging out that you can leave, we’ll help you go home, you can leave on your own, but we have to spend the resources to find you, formally deport you, then there’s a statutory bar, you know, anywhere from five to never coming back to United States under the program. So, I was a part of the plan from the very beginning that sent a message to the whole world that there’s no free ride here anymore. And we knew the self-deportations, self-removals would climb at an extraordinary number, and it has, so I think if you look at the number, if we take self removals out, if we still have a record, historic record of the rest of removals, but if you add the self-removals to it, it’s just three times as much as ever happened before.
GIARITELLI: What’s been the biggest logistical obstacle to this entire process?
HOMAN: There’s just no single obstacle. There’s many obstacles. Sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities makes it more difficult for us to our job, right? Rather than one agent arresting one bad guy in a jail, now, and they release them now, rather than calling us, now we gotta send a whole team to look for somebody that don’t want to be found, look for somebody that’s hiding. Not only that, now we got to arrest him on his turf, who has access to who knows what weapons. So the work that could have been one agent, now we got to send six or seven agents. And in areas it gets really bad, like what’s happening in Minneapolis. Now we’ve got to send a security team to back up the arrest team, so you know you got a dozen guys doing the job that could have took one person. So, sanctuary cities, you know, they make us less efficient, but they’re not gonna stop us. We’re going to keep doing the job. Another thing, another obstacle’s the courts, you got radical judges, district court judges, judges are either issuing stays or temporary restraining orders, and they’re issuing nationwide, which I think Supreme Court already addressed that, but they’re ignoring that, so radical judges, sanctuary cities, I mean, that’s the two biggest obstacles.
GIARITELLI: What about logistically, is getting planes, because ICE only, I think, leased about 13, and now they’re trying to increase?
HOMAN: Yeah, well, the Big Beautiful Bill gave us, you know, unprecedented amount of transportation money, so we’re getting the flights we want now. There’s gonna be a bigger demand now, as we’re bring in 10,000 more agents out, there will be a bigger demand, but we’re ahead of that already. So transportation, heavily funded. Detention, I mean, we’re at about right around 68 to 70,000 beds now. We need to get to 100,000 because the plan from beginning, get 100,000, you know, get 100,000 beds, average length in detention’s 30 to 40 days, that equals over a million removals. So there’s a lot of work being done right now in the detention planning. I’ve been working real close with Markwayne Mullin and the White House on the detention plan. What’s your overall plan look like?
GIARITELLI: And I spoke with some sources at CBP and the DHS about what that looks like, and using the state facilities, the state run ones like Alligator Alcatraz, some of them, but phasing out others, and using some warehouses, but not using others. This sounds like Secretary Mullin has been reevaluating what his predecessor had gone into to more of a stable, sensible approach.
HOMAN: Well, we’re looking at a mix of different, you know, some state facilities, some that we own, some that we contract, but it’s a different situation every area of the country, right? So, we got just recently got New York, signed legislation that not only ended the 287(g) programs, but now we can’t even buy a bed from the local sheriff, so we arrest somebody that’s in a county in New York, we have no bed, so which means we got to fly that person out, so we’re trying to locate facilities where it’s more efficient to hold people in the local area, so you know there’s going to be a combination, you know, a lot of pushback from warehouses, warehouses are not off the table, it’s being discussed, some place don’t make sense, some place it may not, depending on, you know, what’s available for us with the wraparound water, electricity, can the local community sustain it? So we’re working through those issues now. So the plan isn’t final yet, but we’re really close.
GIARITELLI: Okay, I want to bring up New York, since you mentioned it. You had appeared on Fox last February with the mayor, Eric Adams, and said you had agreed at a, came to an agreement on cooperating. I wanted to see is New York City cooperating with ICE detainer requests.
HOMAN: No, me and Mayor Adams had an agreement, he was going to get me back into Rikers Island, which we’ve been kicked out of a long time. He wrote an executive order to get me back in. Of course, the city council immediately shut it down, and that never happened. Of course, new mayor is not helping us at all, and like I said, I met with Governor Hochul about two months ago, went to Albany to meet with her and we talked about a lot of things, and we talked about a lot of discussion about what happened in Minneapolis, and I told her the way we came out of a good spot in Minneapolis was that we got cooperation from every county jail in the state, in some form or fashion, state prison system, we got the local police to respond to our calls when agents were overwhelmed and being attacked. We got the local sheriff to respond to the federal building when those protests were becoming violent. So we came out with unprecedented cooperation. That helps. I explained to her again, it’s safer for the community, safer for the officer, and safer for the alien if we can arrest him in the safety and security of a jail. When you release them to the street, if you got to send an old team out and I explained in Minneapolis, what could have been done by one agent, now we got 12, 13, people out there, because the security posture, and she clearly understood it, but later she decided that she’s going to end all 287(g) agreements, and passed legislation that we can’t even rent a bed. And I don’t know how that helps the community because as soon as we arrest an illegal alien in the state of New York, we’re going to put them on a plane and move them out of state, away from their families, away from what they have there, because we have to. I also said, and she calls it, she said, it was a threat. It’s not a threat. When I lose those 287(g) programs, I lose those jails, that means I’ve got to send more officers into the street to look for more people you released. And so there’ll be more agents there, that isn’t a threat, that’s a law enforcement response to a decision they made to make our job more dangerous and less efficient.
GIARITELLI: When will you start that? Have you already started that? Is New York expecting some sort of crackdown or?
HOMAN: I’m working on a plan, I’m not going to tell you when it’s going to happen, but I don’t want to give too much notice, because safety of our officers. Yeah, I’m currently working on something.
GIARITELLI: I want to hit on when I hit on Bovino and the 100 million, but first I want to ask about 2024 you’d shared this is you’re going to run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen. A couple weeks ago at the border security expo, you said mass deportations are coming. I think there, and the public, there’s confusion about has it already come and it’s over, is it still coming?
HOMAN: No, no, no, no. We just started. We just had, the first year’s a historic year, and we’re going to continue. President Trump committed in the four years he’s in office, we’re going to enforce immigration law at unprecedented levels, and it’s happening. Now a lot of people point that the numbers are down by 12% right now. Well, the government’s shut down, you know, ICE agents, Border Patrol agents, and what’s really hurting us is the contractor people, the people, the smart people that run all these different database checks. I can’t get into the weeds on it because law enforcement sensitive who provide our targeting. Here’s where you, here’s where you may want to find somebody that won’t want to be found based on all kinds of database runs, so that slowed down tremendously, because they weren’t getting paid, so you know it’s numbers are down slightly, but and I know there’s a lot of noise out there about you shouldn’t be just concentrating on criminals, you ought to be arresting everybody, but we are, I don’t know why people don’t understand, just because you prioritize public safety threats doesn’t mean you arrest somebody else’s. If you’ve got a public safety threat here to a non, you know, a non public safety. He has to go first. That’s just common sense, he’s the biggest danger to community. I looked at the numbers just this morning. I look at numbers every morning. We’re about 62% criminal, 38% noncriminal. So let’s say 60-40, 60 criminal, 40 noncriminal. I think that’s a pretty good mix. Would 40% criminal and 60% noncriminal be better? No. So the numbers prove, the numbers prove within itself that we’re arresting noncriminals, and I say the first year number is a record, and we’re continuing to do on that record, but President Trump has committed: mass deportations and no amnesty.
GIARITELLI: The difference under Biden or Obama, where they were doing priority enforcements, they weren’t picking up collateral arrests, they were just saying we’re here for the criminal, everyone else in the house is not a criminal, we don’t care whereas now you’re saying if we come in looking for this known criminal and find 10 other people who are in the country illegally?
HOMAN: They’re all going. You’re in the country illegally, you got a problem, and that’s why you know these people say, well, the collateral arrests are too high, I mean, the left, the Democrats, a lot of collateral arrests, but I got no problem. If they want me to put me in a position to arrest more collaterals. Okay, fine. The problem I had with, the only problem I had with it, it’s just more dangerous for officers, and you know, I’ve buried Border Patrol agents and buried ICE agents. I don’t want to bury anyone else, so if I can get an operation that’s safe for their officers, that’s where I’m at.
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