The Department of Homeland Security plans to flood New York City with more ICE agents since Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed legislation that will stymie the department’s efforts, the White House border czar said Monday.
Speaking on Fox News, Tom Homan said he will fulfill a “promise” he made to Hochul that if the legislation passed, he would send more agents to the city.
“I made her a promise,” Homan said on “Fox and Friends.” “You’re gonna see more ICE agents you’ve ever seen in New York City. And it’s coming.”
“I just reviewed an operational plan,” he added. “I’m not gonna tell you exactly when it’s gonna happen, but it’s coming. I’m keeping my promise. We’re gonna send more ICE agents to New York because you took away the efficiencies of safe arrests in county jails.”
He has previously said he will “flood the zone” in New York City.
Hochul in late May signed legislation that bars ICE agents from wearing masks and keeps immigration agents out of sensitive locations such as churches and schools unless they have a warrant.
The legislation also bars local governments from entering into 287(g) agreements which allow them to deputize local police as ICE agents and allows ICE to use local jails to hold detained migrants.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has entered into such an agreement with ICE, which is using the Nassau County Correctional Facility in East Meadow.
Homan argued on Fox that by prohibiting the agreements, ICE will be denied the ability to arrest illegal immigrants already being held in local jails and will have to send teams of agents into the community to find and arrest them.
“If we can work with the sheriffs and arrest a bad guy in the safety and security of the jail, that means less teams into the neighborhoods, which causes a lot of panic, a lot of problems, right?” Homan said.
But the new legislation means “I’m going to send more agents to New York, because now rather than one guy arresting one bad guy in the jail, now we got to send the whole team into the neighborhood to find this person,” he said.
Hochul has argued that ICE is out of control, arresting many people with no criminal records despite President Donald Trump’s pledge he is going after “the worst of the worst” of illegal immigrants.
ICE agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in January.
Bart Jones has covered religion, immigration and major breaking news at Newsday since 2000. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela, he is the author of “HUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.”