President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said Monday he asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) whether Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) efforts to educate people about their rights while facing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is impeding the agency’s operations.
Speaking on Fox News, Homan said he finds it disturbing that “any member of Congress wants to educate people how they evade law enforcement.”
“You can claim you [are] educating [them about] constitutional rights,” he said, adding, “But what she [Ocasio-Cortez] is, in fact, doing is telling people ‘don’t open the door, hide in your home, don’t talk to ICE.’”
“We are talking about people who are in the country illegally [and have] committed a crime. They are public safety threats,” he continued, saying that federal judges have ordered the removal of many such individuals.
“It’s like AOC and others don’t want ICE to enforce the law that they enacted,” Homan said, referencing the congress member.
When the Fox News host asked him if he thought Ocasio-Cortez was breaking the law, Homan said he would leave that question to the DOJ.
This is not the first time Homan has suggested the possibility of action against Ocasio-Cortez for her attempts to educate people about their rights during ICE raids.
Last week, the “border czar” said he was working with the DOJ to determine if the lawmaker’s actions impede law enforcement efforts.
“So, I’m working with the Department of Justice and finding out. Where is that line that they cross? So, maybe AOC’s gonna be in trouble now,” he said in response to a question on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”
On Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez mocked Homan in a post on the social platform Bluesky.
“‘MaYbe shE’s goiNg to be in TroUble nOw. Maybe he can learn to read. The Constitution would be a good place to start,” she wrote.
The New York lawmaker has strongly criticized the Trump administration over its efforts to carry out what Trump promised on the campaign trail to be the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
