President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation strategy will include targeting so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, his new border czar, Tom Homan, says.
In an interview with The Center Square, Homan said the plan will prioritize national security threats and violent criminals. This includes those with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests.
According to a recent ICE report, a deputy director in the Biden administration said some local jurisdictions “reduced their cooperation with ICE, to include refusal to honor ICE detainer requests, even for noncitizens who have been convicted of serious felonies and pose an ongoing threat to public safety” due to their so-called “sanctuary city” policies. “However, ‘sanctuary’ policies can end up shielding dangerous criminals, who often victimize those same communities,” he said, The Center Square reported.
While many Democratic leaders in so-called sanctuary jurisdictions have said they won’t cooperate with ICE, Homan said that federal immigration law, Title 8 USC 13.24 iii, requires them to do so. Anyone who “harbors or conceals illegal aliens from federal law enforcement officers” are committing a crime, he said.
“Impeding a federal law enforcement officer is a crime,” he told The Center Square. Those who “knowingly harbor or conceal an illegal alien from ICE” is also a crime.
He’s also asked, “What mayor or governor doesn’t want public safety threats out of their communities? That’s their number one responsibility is to protect their communities. That’s exactly what we are going to do.”
Homan says he will work with anyone, Democrats and Republicans, to ensure public safety.
“I’m willing to meet with anybody. Our priority on Day One is public safety.” He’s encouraging local leaders to work with him “to make your community safer.”
The goal is to have local jurisdictions cooperate with ICE requesting to take into custody any illegal foreign national already in a local jurisdiction’s custody. Removing the alleged offender from a local jurisdiction will also reduce costs for the city, county and state. The plan does not require local officers to be immigration officers but to work with ICE agents, Homan says.
ICE agents are able to identify who’s booked in a county jail, for example, because everyone who’s arrested has their fingerprints input into a national criminal NCIC database, which federal agents have access to. Not providing access to those detained in a publicly funded facility is harboring, he argues.
Homan is also asking Trump’s nominated Attorney General Pam Bondi, assuming she’s confirmed, to fully review and issue a formal opinion about whether local jurisdictions that refuse to comply with an ICE detainer request are violating federal law. It is also likely under Bondi that sanctuary jurisdictions would face federal prosecution.
Other options on the table include Congress imposing penalties on sanctuary jurisdictions, including withholding federal funds from law enforcement agencies and city and county governments that harbor illegal border crossers, Homan said.
Homan’s appeal is already working, with New York City’s Democratic mayor saying he’s willing to work with the Trump administration and Denver’s Democratic mayor who backtracked on a claim that he’d direct police to block federal agent operations.
Federal agents already operate in Denver, including at a Denver ICE field office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection port of entry at the airport.
Todd Lyons, acting assistant director of field operations for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in New England, argues elected officials “preaching their sanctuary city status are making it easier for those who commit sex crimes and fentanyl dealers. We need cities and towns to work with us to keep these criminals out of neighborhoods.
“We focus on the worst of the worst and all the political rhetoric is not helping,” he told the Boston Herald.
Of the more than 660,000 criminal foreign nationals identified to be deported by ICE, the majority are living freely in the U.S. They include those convicted of, or charged with, homicide (14,914), sexual assault (20,061), assault (105,146), kidnapping (3,372), and commercialized sexual offenses, including sex trafficking (3,971).
In Massachusetts, sanctuary policies were implemented in multiple cities including Boston, prohibiting police officers from cooperating with ICE.
ICE agents have been arresting violent criminals in Massachusetts, including men convicted of aggravated rape, assault and battery, and fugitives wanted in their home countries for violent sexual crimes. In many cases, sanctuary jurisdictions refused to cooperate with ICE, instead released violent offenders into the community who then committed additional crimes, The Center Square reported.
Local officials advancing sanctuary policies “are welcoming criminals to the state. They are doing their own communities a disservice,” Lyons said. “All we are asking for is to make an arrest of someone already arrested.”
Homan says to local jurisdictions, “work with us to make your community safer.”
Those who won’t, he says, can “get the hell out of the way.”
