(NewsNation) — Border czar Tom Homan has backed ICE officers who wear masks while performing raids.
Homan joined the NewsNation Town Hall alongside Chris Cuomo, Stephen A. Smith and Bill O’Reilly to explain that officers are shielding their identity in response to bounties, threats and doxxing.
“These men and women put a gun on their hip and wear a Kevlar vest to go on the streets every day looking for the worst of the worst to make this country safer. Wearing a mask, if that protects them and protects your families, then that has to be done,” he said.
“I remember the days, some of these cities, if they weren’t wearing a mask during COVID, you got reported to the police and got arrested,” he added.
Homan admitted he does not personally like the look of officers wearing masks, but given the circumstances, he sees the need for them.
“I don’t particularly like the mask either, but name another law enforcement agency that’s over 1,000% attacks on them, and name another law enforcement agency whose spouses and children have been doxxed on social media and been attacked and bullied in churches and schools,” he said.
Much has been made of who ICE is arresting and whether the agency is going too far. Homan repeated that coming into America illegally is a crime and will and should have consequences. However, the border czar said 70% of arrests are “public safety threats.”
“How about the ones that aren’t national security threats, not public safety threats, not national security threats, not gang members. Who are they? … When we find that criminal, many times they are with others, others who are in the country legally. We’re not walking away from them. We’re going to enforce immigration law, unlike the last administration did,” he said.