Tom Homan: President Trump right to combat sanctuary cities
Retired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan said the president's actions will help arrest public safety threats and take them off American streets.
President Trump is "exactly right" to direct his efforts toward combatting sanctuary city policies, retired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan said Saturday.
Appearing on "Fox & Friends: Weekend" with host Griff Jenkins, Homan said he is glad the president is turning his attention toward the issue.
"The Congress isn't going to fix it," he stated. "I asked them two years ago to fix it. They are not going to fix it. They want it to be a 2020 issue."
Speaking in Washington on Friday, the president vowed to oppose sanctuary cities not complying with federal law or ICE agents.
"Not one more American life should be stolen by sanctuary cities," he said. "That's why we are calling on Congress to pass legislation giving American victims the right to sue sanctuary cities, and hold them accountable for the suffering and the damages that they have caused."
On Friday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is set to deploy Border Patrol agents to sanctuary jurisdictions across the U.S. to help ICE track down and detain illegal immigrants freed by left-wing cities and states.
One hundred specially trained officers will work with ICE from February to May. Among the agents are members of an elite unit, which the Times describes as the SWAT team of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
"But look," Homan reacted, "back when I was the ICE director and California passed their sanctuary law, I sent a lot of additional agents out to California and they said it was retaliation. It wasn't retaliation."
"When you take an agent out of the jail -- an agent that can process 10 illegal [immigrants] during a shift -- and you choose to kick the officer out of the jail, then release those 10 illegal [immigrants], it takes a whole fugitive operations team to try to find this person on his turf who has access to who knows what weapons," he explained.
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"This will help arrest those that are public safety threats and take them off our streets," he told Jenkins.
Homan said the president's crackdown on sanctuary policies would send a strong message that the country is "not open to illegal immigration."
"If you are lucky enough to get by the border patrol, you are not home-free no matter what the Democrat leadership wants to say. You can go to the so-called sanctuary cities," he concluded. "There is no sanctuary. ICE is not going to allow sanctuary; neither is Border Patrol."
Fox News' Adam Shaw contributed to this report.