Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at the southern border have “lost total respect in the president of the United States,” former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan told Mark Levin Sunday.
Homan was discussing the Biden Administration’s increasingly lenient policies with regard to illegal immigrants entering the country, taking away the authority of border and immigration security agents to carry out their duties.
Here’s the sad thing that I never thought I would say in my lifetime: an ICE agent, an immigration officer, can no longer arrest somebody for simply being here illegally. That’s not a priority anymore. Being in the country illegally is not illegal in the eyes of the Biden administration.
“Let these men and women do their job,” Homan said.
“Maybe they haven’t defunded ICE or defunded the Border Patrol, but the way they’ve conducted themselves, they effectively have done that through the backdoor,” Levin said.
Below is a transcript of the segment.
Levin: Border Patrol agents, ICE, this is law enforcement, this is federal law enforcement, and the Democrat Party doesn’t like federal law enforcement unless it’s protecting them. Otherwise, they don’t seem to give a damn. Federal law enforcement on the border is there to protect the citizens of the United States. Nobody ever asks this question, so I’ll ask you: What’s life like for a Border Patrol agent or an ICE agent today?
Homan: Well, like I said, I’ve worn both those uniforms, I was a Border Patrol agent, I was an ICE agent for many years. I can tell you right now, I’ve talked to hundreds of them, and their morale has never been worse. Down on the border ─ I’ve been at the border four times in the last two months, and these men and women, I’ll tell you right now, they’ve lost total respect in the president of the United States, which is sad, and they’ve lost respect in the secretary of Homeland Security. Why? Because the secretary, to this day, will say the border is secure and closed, and these men and women are dealing with this crisis everyday, putting themselves in harm’s way, and their secretary won’t recognize that?
And the second thing: the president, during one of his first speeches, accused the last administration of watching children starve to death on the river banks of the Rio Grande. This is the men and women of the Border Control, the men and women putting their lives on the line every day, the men and women who saved over four ─ 7,000 lives already this year by pulling people out of the river, you know, saving people in the desert. These men and women save lives, Mr. President. They don’t watch people starve to death on the Rio banks. So, they’ve lost respect, they’ve been abandoned by their own commander-in-chief and their secretary. That’s what it’s like.
Now, let me tell you something else, when you talked about COVID a few minutes ago, over 20 CBP officers have died from COVID. So, it’s just not gun shots and high-speed chases and fights, they’ve died from COVID from people coming across that border that’ve been infected. That’s just, that’s a fact. And as far as ICE, I spent over 20 years as an ICE agent; ICE morale is in the toilet because they can no longer do their job and uphold the oath they took. And one thing I want ─ the Biden Administration said, “Okay, we only can arrest illegal aliens that are convicted of serious aggravated felonies; we need to prioritize what you do.” Let’s be clear, in the last five or six years, 91% of everybody ICE arrested was a convicted criminal or pending criminal charges. That’s pretty good prioritization and for the president and the secretary to say we’ve got to cut those even further because of lack of resources ─ let me throw this number at you: in FY12, ICE arrested and removed 409,000 people. They’re going to remove and arrest less than a hundred thousand this year, so they’re doing 25% of the work. [Unintelligible] lack resources. Let these men and women do their job. They protect American communities; they’re not allowed to do that. And here’s the sad thing that I never thought I would say in my lifetime: an ICE agent, an immigration officer, can no longer arrest somebody for simply being here illegally. That’s not a priority anymore. Being in the country illegally is not illegal in the eyes of the Biden administration.
Levin: So effectively, what you’re saying, Tom Homan, is maybe they haven’t defunded ICE or defunded the Border Patrol, but the way they’ve conducted themselves, they effectively have done that through the backdoor. So we still have the Border Patrol, we still have ICE, but their hands are tied, the policies are outrageous, their open-border policy is that basically federal law enforcement, when it comes to the border, can’t do its job. People are pouring over, we’re being overwhelmed, and that’s exactly what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want, and that’s exactly why they don’t go down to McAllen, Tex. and some of these other areas where it’s really overwhelming, because they know what their policies are doing. They don’t need to go see what their policies are doing. Do you agree with me?
Homan: Absolutely. I mean, they may not have abolished agencies, but they have taken their authority away. There is no longer enforcement of our immigration laws on the border or in the interior.
Elisabeth Nieshalla is an intern reporter for CNSNews. A student at Taylor University, she studies Politics, Philosophy and Economics and was elected to serve as president of the Class of 2024. She also worked as editor of the opinions page for The Echo, Taylor University’s newspaper.