If you have any lingering doubts about the wisdom of the state’s sanctuary policies, listening to Tom Homan talk should eliminate them for you.
Homan, the acting director of ICE, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, gave a TV interview recently that crossed so many lines of logic, law, lies, human rights and basic decency as to raise the question: Is ICE a lawless agency designed to violate rights?
Homan’s target was California and our state and local laws that, wisely, try to take California governments out of the business of immigration enforcement. That’s good for our safety, because, as police will tell you, they need the cooperation of immigrants and their families to make sure crime is reported, investigated and solved.
Homan doesn’t understand this reality—nor much of anything else. His rant started with the debunked claim that immigrants are a public safety threat (in fact, studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born people).
Then he switched to attack. The federal government needs to go after sanctuary cities and states, taking them to court and taking their money. Also, he intends to send more personnel, to do more aggressive deportations, to punish us. California is shielding immigrants, and that breaks the law. So California must suffer.
This is destroy-the-village-to-save-the-village logic. Homan is arguing that to protect public safety, he’s gotta hurt our public safety.
That argument would not fill Californians with confidence about ICE, much less Homan’s judgment or sanity. But he didn’t stop there.
He then suggested that politicians and public leaders in sanctuary jurisdictions should be personally charged with crimes for following their own laws and protecting their own residents. “We’ve got to take the sanctuary cities on, we’ve got to take them to court, and we’ve got to start charging some of these politicians with crimes,” he said.
That was so crazy that it represented a gift to California politicians. Sacramento’s mayor and other said, in effect: you know where to find me, Mr. Homan.
But maybe we shouldn’t entirely dismiss the logic of the ICE director’s rage. If public officials should be held personally and criminally responsible for words and actions that threaten public safety, maybe we should start by prosecuting one official who has made plain he is a threat to such safety.
Lock Homan up.