At an event with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) at the New College of Florida, Border Czar Tom Homan spoke about border security.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I'll give this to you first, Czar, is we live in Florida,
00:05and we have Governor DeSantis.
00:07And when we have local officials,
00:09I don't care if it's in the judiciary or county
00:12commissioners, city mayors, it doesn't matter,
00:14not following the law, he exercises his Constitution
00:17authority and removes them.
00:19But you have other states, and to your point, Governor,
00:22California, not only are they not following the law
00:24and saying they're not going to follow the law,
00:26but they're even giving more and more incentives
00:28to break the law.
00:30And I will say, on my way in, I did
00:33notice that Gavin Newsom's across the street protesting.
00:36So but what do you do with these states and these governors
00:42like Gavin Newsom and these leaders?
00:44And you've said you'd talk about criminal prosecutions, Czar.
00:48What do we do to rein in these individuals
00:51who think that the rule of law does not apply to them?
00:54Well, luckily, we got Pam Bondi as the attorney general
00:57who's going to sue these individuals.
00:58And I've been clear, when it comes to sanctuary,
01:05they say, well, we're a welcoming community.
01:07We're a sanctuary city.
01:09And their justification is, we want
01:11victims and witnesses of crime, if they're illegal aliens,
01:16victims and witnesses of crime to feel comfortable coming
01:18to law enforcement and not think they'll be turned over to ICE
01:22because we're not working with ICE.
01:24OK, that's bullshit, first of all,
01:28because victims and witnesses of crime
01:30don't want the bad guy in the neighborhood either, right?
01:34So what ICEs strictly want, we want access to the jail,
01:38where they chose to lock somebody up because
01:42of a public safety threat.
01:43That's the person we want to talk to.
01:45We don't want to talk to the victim witness at all.
01:47Matter of fact, if we did talk to the victim,
01:49might end up with a visa if they're a victim of a crime.
01:52But we want to talk to the bad guy.
01:53And I can't believe there's any elected official,
01:56whether it's a governor, a mayor, or a city council
01:58person, like what's happening down in Fort Myers area,
02:02that doesn't want public safety threats removed
02:04from their community.
02:05Their number one responsibility is protecting the community.
02:09So why would any elected official
02:10not want public safety threats removed from their community?
02:13Because that's what ICE is doing.
02:15As far as sanctuary states, sanctuary cities,
02:17you're not going to stop us.
02:19We're just going to keep doing what we're doing.
02:21We'll double the manpower there.
02:22But here's the issue.
02:23Sanctuary cities are going to get exactly what they
02:25don't want, more agents in the community,
02:29and more collateral arrests.
02:30Now, the media is all over right now.
02:32Well, a big part of these criminal arrests
02:34are actually non-criminals.
02:36Yes, they are.
02:37Where do these collateral arrests happen?
02:39Sanctuary cities.
02:40Why?
02:41Because you forced us in the community to find a bad guy.
02:45So when we find the bad guy, he's probably with others.
02:48Others that are in the country illegally,
02:50but maybe not a criminal alien.
02:52They're coming, too.
02:54We're going to force immigration law.
02:55Unlike the last administration under Mayorkas and Biden,
02:59they told ICE agents, immigration officers,
03:01you cannot arrest an illegal alien
03:03for simply being here illegally.
03:05They wrote, here's the executive branch rewriting statute.
03:10They told ICE officers, you can't enforce the law.
03:12Unless they convicted of a serious crime,
03:14you can't arrest them.
03:15Well, that garbage is over with.
03:17If you're in the country illegally, you got a problem.
03:20Now, we're going to prioritize public safety threats first.
03:24And that's what we're doing.
03:25But it's not OK to be in this country illegally.
03:28It's against the law.
03:29It's not OK to cross the border illegally.
03:30It's a crime.
03:32And we'll deal with it in a prioritized fashion,
03:34which is exactly what we're doing.
03:36But here are the sanctuaries here.
03:37Here's the problem.
03:38We just want access to get a bad guy in jail.
03:41One agent can apprehend a bad guy
03:43in the safety and security of a jail, where everybody's safe.
03:47The officer's safe, the community's safe,
03:49and the alien's safe.
03:50But when you force this in the community,
03:52it puts officers at great risk.
03:53Now, they have to arrest a criminal alien,
03:55and it disturbs who has access to who knows what weapons.
03:58It puts the community at risk of further crime.
04:01Releasing a public safety threat back in the public
04:03is just dumb.
04:05Give us the guy in the jail.
04:07And I would say, any elected politician,
04:09you go to the immigrant community,
04:10because look, the immigrant community, even those
04:12who are here illegally, despite them being here illegally,
04:17the vast majority are family people.
04:19They want to raise a family, and they're God-fearing people,
04:21and they don't want pedophiles under anybody either.
04:24They don't want someone arrested for DUI
04:2610 times in their neighborhood either.
04:28Go to an immigrant community and ask them one question.
04:30Would you rather have ICE in the jail or the community?
04:32What do you think they're gonna say?
04:34The jail, because they don't want public safety threats
04:37running around their community either.
04:38And where do most TDA and MS-13, who do they victimize?
04:42The immigrant community.
04:43So I'm sick of the sanctuary city politicians saying,
04:45we're protecting the immigrant community.
04:47No, you're not.
04:48When you set a public safety threat,
04:50you're putting the immigrant community
04:51at greater risk of crime.
04:52You're putting the victim and witness that you're saying
04:54you're protecting at greater risk of retribution.
04:58Let ICE agents in a taxpayer-funded jail
05:01to take the bad guy, not only out of the community,
05:03but out of the country, and make this country safer.
05:06Every criminal alien that we remove from this country
05:09makes this country safer.
05:11Every single one of them.
05:12We're gonna do it one at a time,
05:15and we're gonna make this country safer
05:16at the end of the four years, guaranteed.
05:18I think, I wanna just underscore something Tom said.
05:29Yes, obviously if you have Venezuelan gang members,
05:31that's gonna be a priority for law enforcement,
05:34and it should be.
05:36But that doesn't mean that people who are here illegally
05:39or are not part of this gang
05:40or have not been convicted of a crime
05:42that somehow that means you're fine.
05:44Like, oh yeah, nothing wrong.
05:45But you do hear this rhetoric where,
05:48and you have law enforcement say,
05:49oh, well, if you come illegally and you commit crimes,
05:52then we're gonna go after you,
05:54but not somehow short of that.
05:56If that's the case, you have 20 million people here illegally
06:00I don't know what the number is,
06:01but I would guarantee you the overwhelming percentage
06:04of those people have not been convicted
06:06of separate crimes since they've come.
06:09So if you say the only trigger for being deported
06:12is being convicted of a separate felony
06:14in the United States, then you are basically saying
06:17we have a de facto open border.
06:19If you don't have interior enforcement,
06:21you do not have control of your country.
06:24And so one of the things,
06:25one of the reasons why we wanted to do what we do,
06:28highway patrol, all these other guys,
06:30is because they have interactions with people
06:33who are here illegally who have not been convicted
06:37of a separate crime.
06:38I know, by the way, in the special session,
06:39we made it a crime to enter Florida illegally,
06:42and we created an enhanced felony if you're in Florida
06:45after previously being deported.
06:47That's a state level that we can hold you accountable.
06:49So it's not true to say you haven't committed a crime
06:53if you cross the border illegally,
06:54but there needs to be routine interior enforcement,
06:59and you cannot say that people who are here illegally
07:04are scot-free up and until the time
07:06they actually commit a separate criminal offense.
07:09I wanna get them out before they commit an offense
07:12against someone.
07:12Why would we want more victims to be able to do?
07:15So there's a priority, there's limited resources,
07:17and you have to apply that intelligently,
07:21but we cannot have this rhetoric,
07:23and you hear it a lot on Republicans will say that,
07:26okay, yeah, we're only interested in people
07:28who have committed these serious crimes
07:30once they've come here, and we're somehow not interested
07:33just because you came in illegally.
07:35That's not the state of Florida's policy.
07:37We're holding you accountable if you've entered
07:39the state of Florida illegally,
07:41as you should be held accountable for.
07:43And if I can put, let me footstomp what you said,
07:48because the governor is exactly right.
07:50If the message you wanna send to the whole world
07:51is enter this country illegally, which is a crime,
07:54just don't commit another crime, you're good to go.
07:56You're never gonna solve the border crisis.
07:59You're never gonna fix it.
08:01That's why we have to do what President Trump is doing.
08:04Congress can fix the system if they want.
08:07I don't have a lot of faith they're going to,
08:09but we need to send a message to the whole world.
08:11It's not okay to enter this country illegally,
08:13and let me tell you why.
08:14Under Joe Biden, on an average day,
08:17under Joe Biden, 70%, seven zero,
08:20percent of border patrol agents were pulled off the line
08:23to take care of this humanitarian crisis, right?
08:2511,000 a day, and they were actually changing diapers,
08:28making sandwiches, making baby formula,
08:31taking people to the hospitals,
08:32dealing with this humanitarian crisis.
08:34When you take 70% of agents off the line,
08:37in some sectors in the last couple years,
08:40they pulled every single uniform off patrol
08:43because they have overcrowding.
08:44And the only thing the Biden administration
08:46was concerned about, we can't have overcrowding
08:48because the cameras catch that,
08:50we can't claim the border's secure,
08:51we've got overcrowding in these facilities.
08:53So their number one priority was,
08:55process quickly, release quickly,
08:57because if there's no overcrowding, there's nothing to see.
09:00But when you overwhelm the border to where 70 to 100%
09:02of agents are pulled off the line, what happened?
09:05Enough fentanyl came across this border
09:07to kill a quarter million people.
09:10Sex trafficking was up 600%.
09:14The death of aliens crossing the border
09:16were at a record high.
09:184,000 people died crossing the border.
09:21Basically because the border patrol wasn't there
09:23to pull them out of the river or save them in the desert.
09:26Record number of Americans died,
09:28a record number of illegal aliens died,
09:30sex trafficking up 600%.
09:33No one suspected terrorists,
09:34over 400 people on the terrorist watch list
09:35in four years on the southern border.
09:37President Trump had 14 in four years.
09:40So for those that wanna say it's just simple
09:43illegal immigration, innocent, no it's not.
09:46Because when you overwhelm the system,
09:48all these other bad things happen.
09:50So securing the border, which we're doing right now
09:52at record levels, you're gonna see fentanyl deaths decrease,
09:56sex trafficking would decrease,
09:59deaths of illegal aliens would decrease,
10:01the cartels are gonna go bankrupt.
10:04This is the right thing to do.
10:05Secure borders saves lives
10:08and no one can prove anything different.
10:10The data speaks for itself.
10:12A secure border saves American lives,
10:15it saves aliens' lives, that's a fact.