Homan Looks To Ease Tensions Amid Deportation Campaign, Declines To Defend Decisions of Other Administration Officials

Border tsar Tom Homan is hoping cooler heads prevail as he seeks to create a more orderly process for mass deportations across the country, saying that greater cooperation between blue states and the White House is what is needed. During interviews on Sunday, Mr. Homan declined to comment on some of the decisions and statements made by others in the administration who have ratcheted up the rhetoric in the wake of two Americans being killed in Minnesota. Mr. Homan, a career law enforcement officer who served as acting head of ICE during President Trump’s first term, was tapped to be the White House’s point man for border security and deportation operations at the beginning of this second term. After the killing of Alex Pretti at Minneapolis last month, the president dispatched Mr. Homan to the city in order to calm tensions while others in the administration were trying to paint Pretti as a would-be assassin.During an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Mr. Homan made clear that both the Trump administration and blue state leaders need to work more collaboratively in order to avoid such violence going forward. “I just did things the way I’ve done [them] for 40 years,” he said of his work in Minnesota. “You can’t fix problems talking in an echo chamber. You gotta talk to the people that you may disagree with — people who have different opinions about how you’re doing it.” “In my experience, that’s how you fix problems,” Mr. Homan concluded.He went so far as to praise Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, two people who have been sparring with officials like DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller for the last several months. Mr. Homan says Mr. Walz has been helpful in ensuring that state prisons are now handing over criminal migrants and that Mr. Frey has ensured immigration officers will be safer thanks to coordination with his city’s local law enforcement. “I think we’re in a [much] better spot than we have been,” Mr. Homan said of his relationships with Messrs. Walz and Frey. He announced this past week that the increased presence of DHS agents at Minneapolis, called “Operation Metro Surge,” will be winding down in the coming days. Pretti’s death came just weeks after a DHS officer killed another Minneapolis resident, Renee Good. After the Department of Justice quashed an investigation into the incident and instead urged prosecutors to investigate Good’s widow, several prosecutors resigned in protest from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota. During his interview with CNN on Sunday, Mr. Homan declined to offer any defense of a potential investigation into Good or her widow. “That’s a question for the DOJ. That happened before I had my feet on the ground in Minnesota, so I leave that — that’s a question for Pam Bondi or Todd Blanche,” Mr. Homan said. He was also asked about Ms. Noem’s recent comments about DHS potentially being involved in some kind of election security operation ahead of this year’s midterm elections. At a press conference in Arizona on Saturday, Ms. Noem said it was her department’s responsibility to ensure that the “right people” are voting for “the right leaders” in November. When asked about those comments, Mr. Homan said Ms. Noem should be the one to clarify. “I don’t know. That’d be a question for the secretary. If I had to guess, [she’s saying] only those legally eligible to vote would vote, but I’ve not talked to the secretary about those things. That’d be something she’d have to answer,” he said. In a statement posted to X on Sunday, a DHS spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said Ms. Noem was simply referring to making sure that only citizens are casting ballots, and that “of course,” voters are the ones to determine who the “right leaders” are. Mr. Homan asserted that he, Ms. Noem, Mr. Miller, Ms. Noem’s top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, and others are all on the same team despite disagreements. “I’m not going to let the media divide this administration. Look, it’s one team, one fight. Do me and Secretary Noem agree on everything? No. We have discussions and we have differences of opinion,” Mr. Homan said of a recent Wall Street Journal report on infighting within the Department of Homeland Security. “That’s what makes it a strong team. We bring different ideas to the table and agree on a mission.”

Homan Looks To Ease Tensions Amid Deportation Campaign, Declines To Defend Decisions of Other Administration Officials

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