Thomas Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, engaged Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a fiery exchange during a House Oversight Committee hearing on the treatment of migrant families.
“The recommendation, of the many you recommended, you recommended family separation,” the New York Democrat said to Homan.
“I recommended zero-tolerance,” he responded, referring to the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policy that resulted in migrant family separations. “The same it is with every U.S. citizen parent gets arrested with their child.”
He added, “If I get arrested for a DUI and I have a young child in the car, I’m going to be separated.”
The freshman congresswoman said asylum seekers should not be arrested because the act of seeking asylum is not a crime. Homan snapped back, noting that some asylum seekers cross the border illegally instead of presenting themselves at ports of entry. “If you want to seek asylum, then go to a port of entry. Do it the legal way. The attorney general of the United States has made that clear,” he told Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez said “OK” and moved on.
The exchange between the two was just one of several spirited moments during the hearing. At another point, Homan appeared to take aim at Ocasio-Cortez’s assertions about poor conditions at a migrant detention facility near the border during a visit earlier in the month.
“Those that attack the professional integrity of those that serve and blatantly throw unsubstantiated allegations against these men and women with zero evidence of guilt are wrong and should be ashamed,” he said.
At another point in the hearing, Rep. Gerald Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, started yelling about the inhumane conditions at the border while waving his hands in the air before composing himself to ask a question.
