Border czar Tom Homan took aim on Tuesday at Democrats and sanctuary city politicians for standing against the Trump administration’s deportation operation, and he vowed in a fiery speech to go far beyond the record-setting pace of arrests that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has set in President Donald Trump’s second term so far.
The White House border czar and former acting ICE director rebuked progressive lawmakers as being backward in their approach to criminals who are illegally residing in the country, and promised that the Trump administration would make far more arrests in the coming two and a half years.
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“If you think last year’s historic number was good, wait until next year, when we have 10,000 agents.… You ain’t seen s*** yet,” Homan told the more than 2,200 guests during his keynote speech at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix on Tuesday. “Mass deportations are coming.”
Homan vowed to continue arresting illegal immigrants regardless of their criminal background. The Trump administration, he added, was being pressured by Democratic lawmakers not to make arrests inside churches and schools, which he said have not occurred despite media reports and rumors.
“If you’re a significant public safety threat or national security threat, you have no sanctuary in this nation. You can’t hide anywhere,” Homan said. “The only people that violated the sanctity of a church was Don Lemon and that bunch,” referring to the former CNN anchor who was charged with interfering with religious services while covering an anti-ICE protest in St. Paul, Minnesota, in January.
Tom Homan rebukes Democrats in speech:
— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) May 5, 2026
“For any member of Congress to compare [ICE] to the Nazis or racists is the ultimate, is the ultimate insult, because if we're Nazis for enforcing immigration law, what's that make you, you wrote the law? We're just doing what you wrote.” pic.twitter.com/v7hQwT4F5q
Homan also trounced Democrats’ attempts to erect sanctuary policies, which prohibit local police from turning illegal immigrants in custody for criminal offenses over to ICE rather than releasing them onto the street. Homan took issue with New York’s push to limit 287(g) cooperation, which allows local police to work with ICE.
“You want to release public safety threats in the community. OK, so rather than one agent arresting a public safety threat in the safety and security of the jail, which is safer for the alien, safer for the officer, safer for the community, you want to release them because you don’t want to work with us,” Homan said. “Rather than one agent versus one bad guy, now we’re going to send a whole huge ops team to go find this person, six or seven guys. So what’s going to happen in places like New York … we’re going to flood the zone. You’re going to see more ICE agents you ever seen before.”
Sending more ICE officers into communities would negatively affect the very population that Democratic lawmakers are seeking to protect, according to Homan.
“This crap from these mayors and governors saying, ‘Well, we’re a sanctuary because we’re a welcoming community. We want illegal alien victims and witnesses of crime to feel safe coming to law enforcement to report those crimes.’ That’s just a line of s***. Victims and witnesses of crime don’t want the bad guy back in their neighborhood either,” Homan said. “If you go to any immigrant community and ask them, ‘Would you rather have ICE in your community or in the jail?’ What do you think they’re going to say?”
TOM HOMAN: "The reason we have a mass deportation is a response to mass illegal immigration, historic mass illegal immigration, because what they did for years on the border, it requires a mass deportation." pic.twitter.com/peiMImwkep
— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) May 5, 2026
To date, ICE and Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol have removed approximately 800,000 illegal immigrants from the United States during Trump’s second term, he disclosed.
Homan quipped that he received the Presidential Rank Award from former President Barack Obama for deporting more than 400,000 illegal immigrants in a year, roughly half of what he oversaw this past year.
Homan joked that he was busier than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, given that Trump has tasked him with handling border security, finding 300,000 unaccompanied immigrant children released into the interior from the border, negotiating Department of Homeland Security funding during the partial government shutdown, and ICE’s temporary mission assisting at airport security checkpoints, which he called a “genius” proposal by Trump.
“Because of the men and women in the United States Border Patrol, we have the most secure border in the history of the nation,” Homan said.
Border Patrol has seen the number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border decline to 55-year lows for 15 consecutive months under Trump, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott explained to the Washington Examiner in a sit-down interview last week.
TRUMP’S TOP BORDER OFFICIAL, RODNEY SCOTT, UNPACKS WINS AND PATH FORWARD
Border Patrol is arresting 200 or fewer people per day at the border compared to between 12,000 and 14,000 per day in 2022 and 2023, according to Homan.
“These people, the media, wants to say our policy’s inhumane,” Homan said. “We’re saving 1,000 lives. The most humane thing you can do is secure your border.”
