Border czar Tom Homan schooled Kathy Hochul Wednesday night as the New York governor looks to reduce local cooperation with ICE – claiming the Dem leader’s only hurting the migrants she’s trying to help.
The Trump administration’s top immigration official hit back at Hochul as the pair got into a war of words this week over the possibility of federal agents surging into the Empire State.
The governor said she was “not asking” for more ICE agents to crack down on illegal migrants Wednesday – only for Homan to respond hours later on Fox News: “Well, Governor Hochul, I’m not asking either.”
Homan was on Fox News Wednesday night. Fox News Homan’s threat of more manpower comes as Hochul and state lawmakers near a deal — that would be included in the delayed state budget — to dramatically curtail how much local law enforcement and jails can work with ICE.
If ICE agents can’t work with jail officials in certain New York counties that have agreements with the federal government, Homan stressed the feds will find other ways to track their targets down.
“She wants to end the partnership we currently have which means now we’ve got to send a whole team to look for a criminal that we could arrest in the safety and security of a jail, which is safer for the officers, safer for the aliens, certainly safer for the communities,” he told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“So you’re forcing us into the neighborhoods to find this person, which means we lost the efficiency of the jails that you want to lock us out of, now we have to send a whole team to find this person so of course we’re going to increase manpower – a lot.”
In January, Hochul proposed scraping agreements with the feds that have allowed local jails to hold migrants for ICE.
The feds’ most comprehensive pact is with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the pro-Trump Republican looking to unseat Hochul in November.
Albany Dems also want all law enforcement in the state to stop communicating with ICE unless a person has been criminally charged with a felony or misdemeanor.
ICE won’t be able to rent beds in local jails under the Dems’ proposed series of sanctuary policies, leading detained migrants to be shipped to other parts of the country, Homan told Fox News.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Stephen Yang for NY Post “She wants to say she wants to protect the migrant communities. Really? Because now when we arrest an illegal alien, we can’t rent a bed from any sheriff in New York state so what are we gonna do?” he said.
“We’re gonna arrest an illegal alien, we’re gonna fly them to Texas, Arizona, to one of the detention facilities there away from their families, away from their attorneys. This is what we have to do because she forced us in this position.”
Homan’s threats come after Hochul said she heard Homan vowed to send in more ICE agents if lawmakers passed sanctuary legislation.
“All I’ll say to Mr. Homan is Donald Trump himself said he would not send a surge of ICE agents to the state of New York, unless I asked,” Hochul said Wednesday. “I’m not asking.”
The governor again made clear Thursday she did not want more of an ICE presence in the state.
“They’re going to backtrack on that as a threat to me, trying to threaten the governor of the state of New York, and I don’t take well to threats. They’re going to find that out,” Hochul said, noting she has not directly spoken to Trump or Homan since this latest rift.
“We’re going to pass what we think is important to protect New Yorkers.”
