President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said on the 21st that the Department of Homeland Security will send a large number of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to New York City after the New York City Council blocked the federal law enforcement agency from opening an office in the city’s jails.
On the 19th, an off-duty federal customs officer was shot by an undocumented immigrant during an attempted robbery. The incident prompted Homan, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials to send the message at One World Trade Center in New York on the 21st.
“You don’t want us to go into the jail and arrest a bad guy under the security of the jail. You want to release this bad guy to the street, which is unsafe for foreigners because anything can happen in a street arrest,” Homan said. “So what do we do? We’re going to send more agents in New York City to find that bad guy. Sanctuary cities end up getting what they don’t want: more agents sent to the community.”
Noem said the shooting suspect entered the country illegally in 2023 during the presidency of then-President Biden and was arrested and released four times in the years since. She blamed the shooting on New York’s sanctuary city policies, and she also accused Mayor Eric Adams of not changing those policies despite his good relationship with the Trump administration. “There is no doubt that this agent is fighting for his life in the hospital today because of the policies of our mayor, city council, and officials responsible for keeping the public safe, who refused to change,” Noem said.
Adams has said he wants to work more with federal authorities on immigration issues, but he accused the left-leaning city council of not letting him do so. Adams said he would welcome ICE agents if they could help hunt down “dangerous people,” but he also said he did not welcome ICE agents hunting down ordinary people who are trying to get on the right track.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, the Democratic candidate for city comptroller, countered that ICE does need only a court warrant to deploy personnel to Rikers Island, and they have done so, but “what Homan is talking about is sending unidentified masked agents into the streets to separate families and raid workplaces. This is not about safety, it is about instilling terror.”
