ICE Boss Hits ‘Smoke and Mirror Politicians’

Calling out “smoke and mirror politicians,” the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Wednesday that sanctuary policies endanger the public and law-enforcement officers.

Speaking at a Border Security Expo in San Antonio, acting ICE Director Thomas Homan said sanctuary jurisdictions don’t even protect illegal aliens.

“Most of the people we arrest are already in jail. When our agents are prohibited from entering jails, we must go into the community and arrest more people,” Homan said.

The outspoken ICE chief said sanctuary locales that refuse to cooperate with immigration agents are effectively “bankrolling criminal organizations” that traffic in guns, drugs and human beings.

“They [politicians]are enticing the very people who kill our agents,” said Homan, nominated by President Donald Trump to be ICE’s full-time director.

Homan has previously said sanctuary city officials should be charged with crimes.

Admitting that he gets “emotional” about the subject, Homan noted that he began his career as a Border Patrol agent, and he blasted pro-sanctuary politicians who “never wore a badge or carried a gun.”

“They make your job harder and put you in harm’s way,” he told an audience of federal immigration officers at the annual border security conference.

Homan repeated his pledge to step up ICE enforcement at work site “job magnets,” particularly in California, which has declared itself a sanctuary state.

“Because we’re barred from entering jails there, we have to send five or six officers into the community to do what one officer could do,” he said. “Ridiculous.”

Homan praised Trump’s immigration agenda, while suggesting that the president’s spate of executive orders could be boiled down to one sentence: “You will now enforce the laws enacted by Congress.”

“We’ll enforce the law without apology,” Homan concluded to a storm of applause.

Earlier, an official from Homeland Security Investigations told the conference that fewer people are notifying immigration authorities of suspected human-trafficking activity.

Jack Staton, a special agent in charge at HSI, said the general public can help stop the deadly cycle by calling Homeland Security’s 24-hour tip line.

“No one wants to see people in harm’s way,” Staton said. Except, perhaps, for those smoke-and-mirrors politicians in their faux sanctuaries.