Military flights deporting migrants out of the U.S. will depart every day, with the numbers steadily increasing, but the success of the mission will depend on Congress allocating enough money to make it happen, Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said Sunday.
"It's a force multiplier, and it's sending a strong signal to the world: Our border's closed," Homan told ABC's "This Week" anchor Martha Raddatz.
When asked how the administration can afford to deport the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., Homan replied, "What price do you put on national security?"
"What price do you put on these young ladies that have been raped and murdered and burned alive?" he said. "If you don't secure that border, that's when sex trafficking goes up. That's when, you know, the fentanyl comes in and kills a quarter of a million Americans, and I don't put a price on that."
He added that a minimum of 100,000 additional beds need to be in the detention centers to house the immigrants and called on Congress to "come to the table quick" and give the administration the money needed to secure the border.
Initially, the deportations were to be of immigrants who have been convicted or arrested for breaking the law, but Homan said that all migrants in the U.S. illegally are "on the table" and subject to be removed.
The administration said more than 500 people were arrested on the first day of deportations last week, but Homan said that some of them were "collateral arrests" made in sanctuary cities.
"They lock us out of the jails," he said. "Instead of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] being able to arrest those people, where the officer is safe, the alien is safe, and the public is safe, they're released back into the community, which endangers the community. But when we find them, [they'll] be with others most likely. … If they're in the country illegally, they're coming too."
Most of the arrests were in sanctuary cities, said Homan. And the numbers will continue to grow as agents capture "as many as we can get."
He also defended the administration's stance about no longer telling ICE agents to avoid sensitive locations, including schools, hospitals, and churches.
"How many are aged 14 to 17?" he said.
ICE officers, he added, "should have the discretion to decide if a national security threat or a public safety threat is in one of these facilities."
He also dismissed critics speaking out against the arrests in the sensitive locations, saying "there's consequences" to being in America illegally.
"We're enforcing the laws Congress enacted and the president signed," Homan said. "If they don't like it, change the law. I find it hard to believe that any member of Congress is telling us not to enforce the law.
Homan also pushed back on concerns that some countries say they won't take back people when they're deported.
"El Salvador didn't want to take their MS-13 members back. It took President Trump 18 hours to make that happen," Homan said.
And to make the deportations a "mission accomplished situation," that will mean taking away public safety threats, watching crimes decrease, and deporting every illegal gang member.
"We can do what we can with the money we have," he said. "Our success every day is taking the public safety threat off the streets and getting the national security threat out of here."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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