More teams are needed to arrest and deport immigrant criminals, as "we've got to step up the pace," border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday on Newsmax.
"We're going to expand the number of teams out there because we've got a lot of criminals arrested," Homan told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "The last count, we had over 700,000 illegal aliens with criminal records. That's not counting criminal gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua."
He added that Tren de Aragua (TDA), a Venezuelan gang with members in several cities throughout the United States, is "No. 1 on our list."
"We've got to wipe them off the face of the Earth when it comes to this country and get them out of here," Homan said.
TDA, he added, not only are gang members and public threats, but they are selling illegal guns to other gang members.
"Some of these guns they sold with what they call the switch. You add it to a Glock handgun and turns a Glock handgun into a machine gun, fully automatic," said Homan. "These are bad people, and I just wish that these sanctuary cities would work with us."
He added that there are "many more" raids planned in cities across the United States and that the mayors and governors who say they will block federal immigration enforcement in sanctuary cities and states are "all talk."
"I've sent out numerous warnings," said Homan. "You can sit there and watch us, you know, protect your communities and remove public safety threats … they can't knowingly impede what we're trying to do because that's a felony, and they can't knowingly shield and harbor an illegal alien from ICE. That is a felony," said Homan.
"I've arrested U.S. citizens throughout my career for knowing, harboring, concealing illegal aliens in their home or their place of business. Politicians," he added. "They're no better. No one is above the law."
Homan also called on officials to allow ICE agents to conduct arrests while immigrants are already in county jails, which is more safe all around than allowing them to go free.
Homan also denied that ICE agents have gone to schools or churches to arrest people. He insisted, though, that their work is done to save children.
"We've taken a lot of sexual predators off the street, some of them child sex offenders," said Homan. "They are walking the streets of Chicago; they were walking the streets of New York. We took them into custody and took them off the streets. We're saving children. We're protecting children."
Still, criminal immigrants are national safety threats and have "no safe harbor," said Homan.
"If we have a significant public safety threat, and he's on a college campus, or he's in a school, we're going to go there, and we're going to arrest them," said Homan. "If you look at MS-13, a vast majority of those folks are between the ages of 15 and 17, and some of them attend high school."
Homan further told Newsmax that President Donald Trump is doing an "amazing job" lowering border crossings.
"The other day, we had 524 encounters — total encounters — on our entire borders," said Homan. "I started in 1984 in the Border Patrol, and I've never seen that number. Remember, it's just a few months ago, we were doing [10,000], 11,000 a day under the Biden administration."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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