RCP’s Phil Wegmann interviewed ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan on Thursday’s edition of the RealClearPolitics podcast about Iranians arrested by ICE this week, two million people who entered the U.S. without registering at all during the Biden administration, and what the “Big, Beautiful Bill” will do on immigration enforcement. “It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, but it’s our number one focus,” Homan said. “We didn’t wait for the attack in Iran, but right now we put our foot on the gas with what happened in Iran.” “We all know we had an open border for the last four years, where Border Patrol’s main focus was under the direction of Mayorkas: process quickly, release quickly. So a lot of the vetting wasn’t done.” “People want to say all these people are asylum seekers, they have a right to come, they have a right to claim asylum, and the right to due process,” Homan said. “But here’s what we need to know: over the last 10 years, if you look at immigration court data, nearly nine out of 10 people who claim asylum at our border end up with an order of removal. It’s fraudulent asylum claims.” “The issue is, we’ve got over two million people who crossed the border under Joe Biden, we don’t know who they are, where they came from, why they’re here. That’s the biggest concern of mine,” Homan said. “They couldn’t do proper vetting because they don’t have access to information from the country of Iran. However, the biggest concern is the two million plus who paid more to get away because they didn’t want to be fingerprinted. They didn’t want to be vetted. They didn’t want to even deal with law enforcement at all. That’s the biggest concern for me. How many of them were from Iran?” “That’s what the FBI and ICE and the intelligence community were trying to run down since Jan. 20. We’re finding some. We’ve got a lot more to find.” “That’s why we need this ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ passed. It needs to be on the president’s desk by July 4,” Homan said.” We’ve got about 20 million illegal aliens in this country, and we have less than 5,000 deportation officers-we need that funding for more resources, more beds, more transportation, more targeting-especially right now.” “I don’t think this was mismanagement, I don’t think this was incompetence,” Homan said about the Biden administration. “The open border was by design. And I mean that because Joe Biden was vice president under Barack Obama, and Alejandro Mayorkas was a deputy secretary under Jeh Johnson under the Obama administration.” “And ICE wasn’t removing hardly anybody. If you look at the numbers from ICE, in the four historic years of illegal immigration on the border, ICE had the lowest numbers of removals in the history of the agency,” he said. “So Mayorkas and Biden did the complete opposite. They knew that worked back in FY12 and FY13. So that’s why I say it’s on purpose. There’s no reason to unsecure a border. We handed them the most secure border in my lifetime, and they unsecured it on purpose.” “People ask me, why would they do that? Well, they must obviously see a future political benefit in doing that. So Biden also overturned the Trump census rule when he did all the executive orders that destroyed everything we did. I think they felt like these are future Democratic voters. When he overturned the Trump census rule, these millions of illegal aliens being released to sanctuary cities will be counted in the next census, which will result in more seats in the House for the Dems. I truly believe that. There’s no other reason to unsecure a border unless they thought they had a future political benefit by doing so.” “They obviously weren’t concerned about national security threats.” “Understand this. When you pay the cartels to enter this country, you pay them one amount to get to the border, turn yourself into a green uniform, like the last four years, and the cartel’s job ends at the border,” he said. “But if you want to get away, you want to get to New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, and not be apprehended, you’ve got to pay a hell of a lot more.” “So why did two million people plus pay more? Not to get a free flight to the city of their choice. Not to get a free hotel. Not to get three meals a day. Not to get free medical care. Not to get work authorization that was basically handed to them after 920 days. Why did two million people pay more not to take advantage of that giveaway program? Because they didn’t want to be vetted. They didn’t want to be fingerprinted. That scares the hell out of me. And that should scare the hell out of everybody.” “If you think not a single one didn’t come here to do us harm, then you’re ignoring the odds,” Homan said. “This is a huge national security vulnerability. The biggest one I’ve ever seen. And that’s why we need all focus on this right now. This should be a nonpartisan issue.” “With the Big, Beautiful Bill, we can do more,” Homan said. “ICE hasn’t grown in size in decades. We’ve got over 20 million aliens in this country and 5,000 deportation officers. The bill is going to hire more deportation officers and more money for detentions.”
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