Thomas Homan, executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told a congressional committee Tuesday that his officers are being “vilified" and "ridiculed" for taking what little action they're allowed against illegal immigration.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the resurging wave of illegal aliens crossing the Southwest U.S. border, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) asked Homan about ERO’s recent capture of about 120 illegal aliens who’d been ordered removed by an immigration judge in 2014 – only a small percentage of the 1,800 removable aliens the ERO had been tasked with finding and deporting out of the roughly 127,000 unaccompanied children and family units that were apprehended that year.
Check out what Homan had to say about what happens when immigration officers actually try to enforce immigration law:
Sessions: Did people say, ‘Good work, Mr. Homan, you’re doing a good job!’ Or did the political crowd start attacking you for actually going out to take this small number – 1,800 out of 127,000 – did they say you’re doing a good job? Or did they attack you for trying to enforce the law that the judge had ordered?
Homan: It’s frustrating…
…If any of us drive home tonight and get arrested for reckless driving, you’re gonna get a summons to appear in court.
Sessions: And if you don’t appear, what happens?
Homan: They’re gonna arrest you. And also, if you go to court and you’re ordered to make restitution…and you don’t follow the court’s order, you get arrested.
But in the immigration context, the men and women of ERO go out and enforce the law, enforce the law that Congress has enacted, what you appropriate me to do, enforce the law, they get ridiculed by the media, by NGO’s as violating civil rights…they get ridiculed and vilified for enforcing the law that’s on the books.
They’re law enforcement officers, they’re doing their sworn duty, they’re enforcing the law, and we’re not going to apologize for doing it.
Watch the clip from Homan's testimony before Congress: