How Trump’s Border Czar Plans To Put Sanctuary Cities Out Of Business

We’ve heard a lot from Tom Homan lately, and for good reason. He’s the incoming border czar for the second Trump administration. And he’s vowed, unapologetically, to deport as many illegal aliens as possible — and to arrest any local officials who try to intervene.

We talked about that promise yesterday, in the context of the mayor of Denver, who’s suggesting that he will defy federal immigration authorities who try to carry out deportations in the second Trump term. Homan’s response was the correct one — if the mayor of Denver wants to go to jail, then ICE will happily oblige.

This kind of showdown between Tom Homan and local officials has been brewing for a very long time. During the first Trump administration, when Homan served briefly as the acting director of ICE, several local governments announced that they would undermine the work of federal immigration officials. And maybe no single local official was more brazen about her efforts than Libby Schaaf, who at the time was the mayor of Oakland, California.

This is an incident that’s mostly been forgotten. But it’s one of the most extraordinary moments in modern American politics. And it’s crucial to understanding Tom Homan’s origin story as a hardliner in dealing with states that interfere with federal immigration enforcement. It also provides insight into how he’s likely to direct immigration enforcement in Trump’s second term.

Here’s how the showdown began. As mayor of Oakland, Schaaf somehow got wind of an upcoming ICE raid in the Bay Area. And then she did everything in her power to sabotage the raid in order to protect as many illegal aliens as she could. First she went on social media to announce that the raid was coming. Then she held a press conference to explain that it was her “duty” to compromise an ongoing federal law enforcement operation. Watch:

What Schaaf was basically doing there was serving as a gang lookout. She heard that the police were coming, so she told everyone to hide, with the clear and explicit goal of obstructing law enforcement. And it worked. Following Schaaf’s early warning, more than 800 illegal aliens with criminal records managed to evade ICE’s crackdown in the Bay Area.

As Tom Homan put it at the time:

The Oakland mayor’s decision to publicize her suspicions about ICE operations further increased that risk for my officers and alerted criminal aliens – making clear that this reckless decision was based on her political agenda.

To be clear, every single person that ICE was looking for was guilty of multiple crimes. They were people who had no right to be in this country, for one thing. And they also committed additional crimes when they were here. Among the 150 aliens that were arrested by ICE during that crackdown, for example, was a gang member who had four prior deportations, along with convictions for sex with a minor, DUI, and assault. He apparently wasn’t paying attention to the news that day, so Tom Homan’s agents were able to find him.

After the raid, Donald Trump told reporters that he would direct the DOJ to investigate Libby Schaaf for obstructing federal agents. He told his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to look into it. Watch:

As we all know, in the end, nothing came out of this. Jeff Sessions and everyone else in the room nodded along as Trump made this suggestion, and then they promptly forgot all about it. Instead of prosecuting Schaaf for interfering with the enforcement of federal law, the DOJ got to work investigating Donald Trump for things he didn’t even do. They were more interested in fake allegations of collusion with Russia, than investigating actual, videotaped evidence that the mayor of Oakland was colluding with felons to obstruct federal investigations.

At the time, the idea of hauling an elected official to a courtroom seemed like a red line to a lot of conservatives. Even when an elected official was clearly and deliberately violating the law, as was the case with Libby Schaaf, very few people in power had the political will to punish her for it. They didn’t want to go on camera and call for her arrest. After all, Republicans thought, if we start arresting our political opponents — even ones who actually have committed serious crimes — then Democrats might try to arrest us. Of course as it turns out, Democrats didn’t need permission from Republicans. They were going to escalate to this level regardless. Republicans played it safe for fear of the Democrat escalation. But Democrats escalated anyway. It’s a tale as old as time. 

But Tom Homan was the notable exception. All the way back in early 2018 — even before the mayor of Oakland publicly undermined ICE — Homan said that the leader of every sanctuary city in the country should go to jail. But Homan was apparently out-voted, so that never happened. Schaaf was never investigated, much less prosecuted.

Of course, over the past few years, a lot’s changed. Democrats have decided that there’s no problem with prosecuting their political opponents for crimes that are completely fake. They have dispensed with every “norm” and “principle of jurisprudence” that counsels against these kinds of prosecutions.

So now, six years later, there’s reason to believe that Homan will have the opportunity to actually follow through on his plan to arrest officials who stand in his way. Homan certainly seems to think that’s a distinct possibility, based on his comments responding to the mayor of Denver this week. I played part of this clip yesterday. Here it is again if you missed it:

That was Homan’s response to the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, threatening that there would be a “Tiananmen Square moment” if ICE tried to enforce immigration law in Denver. Johnston implied that Denver Police and tens of thousands of Denver residents would obstruct ICE, in the same way the guy stood up to the line of Chinese tanks.

So the analogy is equating the enforcement of existing immigration laws — laws that any country needs in order to be defined as a country — with a communist regime’s violent crackdown on a pro-democracy protest. He’s saying Denver residents are justified in seeing a parallel between the two events. And he’s encouraging them, along with law enforcement, to stand in the way of federal agents.

Fundamentally, what’s happening here is that the mayor of Denver is assuming that the second Trump administration will function a lot like the first one. He’s betting that Republicans will back off, rather than upset the activists and the mothers who are “waving the roses” and so on.

That’s the same approach that the local media and Democrat activists are taking in California, where a similar effort to “resist” the next Trump administration is underway. As Fox News reports, a city council in Northern California has just voted to resist federal immigration officials in Trump’s second term:

The Redwood City Council in California voted 4-3 in favor of calling for staff to draft an ordinance for consideration that would restrict the city from cooperating with immigration authorities. … During discussion of his proposal on Monday, [council member Chris] Sturken argued in favor of passing an ordinance to ensure that no city resources may be utilized to cooperate with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, unless required under law.

Here’s how the local CBS affiliate is selling this proposal:

You might have noticed that, every time they try to make these emotional appeals where they try to “humanize” people who are in this country illegally, they end up sabotaging their own argument. In this case, we apparently have a woman who came to this country illegally more than a decade ago. And in that period, she’s never bothered to learn conversational English. She’s never obtained any kind of legal authorization to be here. But we’re supposed to feel sorry for her and allow her to stay in this country, because even though she broke the law, she seems like a nice person. That’s the argument they’re going with in the state of California.

And they’re not alone.

Activists in Arizona are doing the same thing. They’re gearing up for the second Trump administration by working on their “storytelling” skills. Watch:

So the “narrative” is that illegal aliens are “criminals,” according to the activist. And that narrative is true, because these aliens are in this country illegally. But did you know that some criminals are moms and dads, too? Did you realize that? And you can’t possibly throw moms and dads in jail. You can’t possibly make them face the consequences of their actions. That would just be unthinkable — even though it happens every day, in every state, in every country in the world.

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Then she goes on to say that one of her clients has been in Arizona for six months without filing an asylum claim. And that’s part of the problem. No one should be in this country while their asylum claim is being processed, because the overwhelming majority of asylum claims are fraudulent. These claims are often crafted with the help of NGOs and law firms, who include fake stories of political persecution to cover up the fact that these aliens are here seeking economic benefits. But once you let people into this country to file these bogus claims, as we’ve learned, it’s very hard to get rid of them. So again, this is yet another argument from the activists that ends up being self-defeating. They’re making our point for us.

These are people who have not adapted their strategy in any meaningful way in the past four years.

Rather than offering solutions, they’re trying (and failing) to appeal to our emotions. And of course, they’re also committing to engaging in even more lawfare. That’s not going to change, either.

Over in Illinois, for example, they’re vowing to take the Trump administration to court over his proposal to use “military assets” to carry out deportations. Watch:

Trump’s proposal to use the military is a concerning sign for Democrats, though not for the reasons they’re claiming. In reality, they’re upset because it’s a clear signal that, in his second term, Donald Trump is going to use every available means at his disposal to get illegal aliens out of this country. In terms of tactics, this is an escalation from what we saw in Trump’s first term. And so, predictably, Democrats are claiming it’s somehow illegal.

What’s missing from their analysis, though, is that Trump never said he’d order troops to remove illegal aliens. He said that military “assets” could be used — which is in keeping with how every president since Bill Clinton has sent the National Guard (and active-duty members of the military) to the border to perform various support roles. Those roles have included monitoring the border and fixing equipment, for example.

Trump’s incoming homeland security adviser (and deputy chief of staff) Stephen Miller has previously said that, in Trump’s second term, the military could build temporary facilities to house illegal aliens prior to their deportation. That’s another option that would probably have no problem in the courts.

As Ryan Burke, a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, recently put it: 

I think that [Trump’s plan] probably won’t face a whole lot of successful challenges. There’s too much ambiguity in these laws to point to something that says, hey, you absolutely cannot do this.

For their part, over in New Mexico, state officials are walking the line between “deportations are inhumane” and “the border needs to be secure somehow.” Here’s the state’s governor explaining that, while more border security is good, it’s wrong to separate families and use the military in any way to accomplish that goal. Watch:

This is the middle ground that some Democrats have apparently decided on, ahead of Trump’s second term. They recognize that Americans overwhelmingly want border security. They want to see immigration law being enforced. After the last election, there’s no denying that.

But then Democrats claim that any immigration enforcement needs to respect the sanctity of the families of illegal aliens. And then they threaten to use the legal system to shut down any practical solutions.

They’re going with that approach because, for the most part, it worked during Trump’s first term.

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Politicians like the mayor of Oakland didn’t face any consequences for undermining federal immigration policy. Complaining about “family separations” — as if family separations don’t happen every day in our judicial system — was effective as well. Democrats could claim to care about immigration enforcement, while preventing immigration law from actually being enforced.

From the response of these various sanctuary cities and states to the incoming Trump administration, it’s very apparent that Democrats’ tactics probably won’t be any different this time around. They think they can derail Trump’s deportation agenda with the same lazy appeals to emotion, backed up by lawfare. 

This is an act we’ve all seen before. It’s an act that Tom Homan in particular is very familiar with. He’s been very consistent, over the past eight years, about how exactly he’d deal with this particular strategy. He plans to deport anyone who’s illegally in this country, whether they’re part of a “family unit” or not. He doesn’t seem particularly keen on allowing anyone to stand in his way, either. And if there’s a reason for Democrats to drop the emotional blackmail and let Tom Homan do his job, it’s that no one has any incentive anymore to hold him back.