The national controversy surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its tactics has reached new levels in recent weeks, following incidents in which ICE officers fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo a week earlier in Texas. With this in mind, White House border czar Tom Homan apparently thought it would be a good idea to field some questions from reporters as this week got underway.
It did not go especially well.
During a brief Q&A, Homan covered quite a bit of ground, downplaying federal immigration agents’ “mistakes” in Minnesota, dodging questions about ICE agents’ vetting and qualifications, and struggling to explain the administration’s decision to roll back policies related to body cameras on immigration officers.
But of particular interest was Homan’s perspective on the public discourse.
“I said this a year ago,” the border told reporters. “If the hateful rhetoric doesn’t stop, there will be bloodshed. And unfortunately, I was right. And I’ll tell you something else: It’s not over yet.”
As part of the same comments, Homan accused unnamed critics of “miscommunicating what ICE does every day,” adding, “I’m afraid that we’re going to bury an ICE agent. I’m afraid that I’m going to hand another folded flag to a spouse or child of an ICE agent for simply doing his job.”
He concluded with a condemnation of unnamed members of Congress who call ICE agents “fascists and Nazis.”
At this point, we could talk about the fact that Homan had no similar concerns when it was Donald Trump who compared federal agents to fascists and Nazis. We could also talk about Homan using violent rhetoric of his own against his political opponents.
But as relevant as those angles are, perhaps most notable is the fact that the public keeps seeing a prominent and influential White House official trying to address a serious policy problem by stifling dissent. Indeed, at the heart of Homan’s argument was the idea that everything would be fine just so long as ICE’s critics shut up.
The border czar has been unsubtle on this point for quite a while. As recently as last week, Homan appeared on Fox News and said, in reference to congressional Democrats, “There’s still going to be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted.”
As Homan sees it, the systemic problems have nothing to do with ICE, its agents, its training or its use of violence. Rather, the problem is with Americans daring to criticize ICE in ways that bother the White House border czar.
To save lives, Homan effectively argued, ICE’s detractors should simply say what he wants them to say.
I have a hunch this won’t work — in part because ICE’s critics don’t care about Homan’s opposition to dissent, and in part because that’s not how the public discourse works in the United States.
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