President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar” is going on a warpath after liberal leaders began issuing warnings in recent days that they plan to defy the administration’s mass deportation orders.
Tom Homan, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director in Trump’s first term, made perhaps his most striking remark Tuesday, when he threatened to throw the Democratic Denver mayor in jail if it came to that.
“He’s willing to go to jail. I’m willing to put him in jail,” Homan said of Mayor Mike Johnston during a television interview.
Homan then rattled off a federal statute he has cited in several interviews as his answer for defiant mayors. The statute, found under Title 8, Section 1324, prohibits “bringing in and harboring certain aliens.”
“Read about that, and don’t cross that line because it is a felony to harbor and conceal an illegal alien from ICE. Read the statute. Don’t cross that line,” Homan said last week of Boston’s Democratic mayor, Michelle Wu.
Leaders vowing to rebel
Leaders in sanctuary jurisdictions, such as Johnston, Wu, and others, have become outspoken in their refusal to cooperate with Trump’s plan to deport the estimated 11 million migrants living in the country illegally.
Trump said in an announcement that as border czar, Homan “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.” Homan has since vowed to focus first on using ICE to remove what he has estimated are 1.5 million migrants with deportation orders.
Wu pointed during a recent interview to the Boston Trust Act, which prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with federal officers to enforce deportation in many cases. Sanctuary cities across the country all have similar laws.
But Homan has said he does not need local law enforcement’s assistance for ICE to carry out its work. Wu said she was in a “scenario-planning” phase in which she was still examining possible solutions to that.
Johnston, the Denver mayor who elicited the most direct threat from Homan, drew a viral comparison to deadly protests against the Chinese military in Beijing, though he has since walked back the comment.
“More than us having [the Denver Police Department] stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there,” Johnston said. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right? You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants, and you do not want to mess with them.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) said days after Trump won, “If you come for my people, you come through me.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom (C-DA), who brought dozens of lawsuits against the first Trump administration, is plotting another expensive resistance effort in Trump’s second term and has said California is “ready to fight” Trump on all policy fronts.
Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass successfully pushed through her city council a “sanctuary” ordinance in response to Trump’s win. Homan, unfazed, said he would send “twice as many” federal authorities to her city.
Homan’s plans in practice
The law Homan said he would use against the Democratic leaders, section 1324, is an anti-smuggling statute that has been brought against 84,000 people in the last two decades, according to federal statistics. In 2022, the majority of the statute’s offenders received prison sentences, the statistics showed.
Joshua Blackman, an associate professor at South Texas College of Law, told the Washington Examiner that bringing indictments against mayors and governors who attempted to hinder federal immigration enforcement was “bad practice,” not the best use of resources, and potentially a commandeering violation.
“I don’t think the states are going to be more eager to help when their mayor can be thrown in jail,” Blackman said. “And I have to imagine U.S. attorneys will be very hesitant to throw mayors in jail for not enforcing federal law. This could be flipped around in four years, where you might have a [Democratic president’s] DOJ throwing certain governors in jail for one reason or another.”
It is infrequent, but not abnormal, for political leaders to face criminal charges that can sometimes lead to imprisonment, but these cases typically revolve around corruption allegations.
RJ Hauman, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation who leads the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, told the Washington Examiner that Homan’s threats simply matched the bluster coming from vocal Democrats, such as Johnston.
“It’s easy to talk as the dust settles in an election where they were completely rebuked by the American people,” Hauman said.
He added that “if they’re talking a big game, thinking that they will deter ICE from coming into their community to enforce the law, well, they’re sorely mistaken. A Tiananmen Square moment in Denver to keep out federal authorities from enforcing the law. That’s an insurrection.”
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Homan has also hinted at withholding federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions, but Blackman noted the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shut down that practice in Trump’s first term.
Hauman said there were numerous ways to apply funding pressure, including by defunding nongovernmental organizations that aid illegal migrants or incentivizing jurisdictions that were cooperative with deportation efforts.
