Tom Homan means business
He does indeed:
Watch Dana Bash do a double-take in shock and horror as Tom Homan explains to her that an illegal alien doesn’t have to be convicted of a serious crime to face deportation.
Amazing stuff. pic.twitter.com/QdNAgOhyEe
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 21, 2025
What he’s saying there, among other things, is that the policies of “sanctuary cities” will almost inevitably cause more non-violent, low-profile illegal immigrants to be arrested and deported rather than fewer. It’s a reminder to the authorities in those cities that cooperating by allowing ICE to arrest criminal illegal aliens in prisons will be to everyone’s benefit. Will the mayors comply, or not?
Homan doesn’t mince words. He’s no diplomat; that’s for sure. And his plain talk is a reminder of how seldom we hear it these days, and how much the Overton Window has moved in the last decade or two on the subject of illegal aliens, a term I purposely use because it’s the old-fashioned legal phrase. “Undocumented”? He’s not having it. For much of the US, probably the majority of its citizens, his unvarnished speech is a relief. To others, it’s a horror – describing exactly the sort of thing they feared about the possibility of a Trump victory.
I live in the sanctuary city of Los Angeles. I have used the phrase “illegal alien” for many years now. Ignorance of basic language and the rule of law has had devastating consequences.
Sharon W (3:34 pm) has “used the phrase ‘illegal alien’ for many years now,” as have I, except on those occasions when I have referred to them in the aggregate as simply “invaders”. Let’s hear for plain language, eh?
Tom Homan needs elocution lessons. I don’t mind the plain talk at all. I would appreciate plain speaking.
Why can’t everyone sound like me?
Albert Mehrabian’s “7-38-55 Rule” – 7% verbal (words used), 38% vocal (tone, pitch, and inflection), and 55% nonverbal (body language, facial expressions, etc.).
I suspect that a huge number of non-English speaking illegal aliens understand him perfectly…
ICE Enforcement: 308 Arrests in Trump’s First Days
Plain as day – ‘worst first‘…
The US is already a de facto English/Spanish country.
The Trump/Homan “Remain in Mexico” line means no illegals going North into the USA: FROM ANYWHERE.
We’ll still get 400,000 or more H1B visa holders yearly, per yesterday’s Wall St. Journal story, most from India because they are techies which Facebook and Amazon, etc., and all tech businesses, always need more of.
It is not only a federal crime to assist an illegal in avoiding apprehension, it is a federal crime to knowingly employ illegals.
“The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), enacted on September 30, 1996, added a new 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(3)(A) which makes it an offense for any person, during any 12-month period, to knowingly hire at least 10 individuals with actual knowledge that these individuals are unauthorized aliens. The basic statutory maximum penalty for violating 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(i) and (v)(I) (alien smuggling and conspiracy) is a fine under title 18, imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both.”
Here’s hoping that over the next 4 yrs. Homan ‘decorates’ his teepee with many, many scalps.
Go after the employers. End all benefits. Especially birthright citizenship if either parent is an illegal immigrant. No jobs + no benefits = self-deportation.
@Geoffrey:it is a federal crime to knowingly employ illegals…. Go after the employers.
It is against Federal law to check legal status BEFORE hiring someone. Employers have no choice but to hire illegals because they are not allowed to check who is illegal or not before hiring. It is very difficult to prove that an employer deliberately and knowingly hired illegals, but they may have emails or other records that indicate they have done so.
This is the most important thing people need to understand about illegal immigration, that the laws are designed to do nothing to prevent them working. In the vast majority of cases an employer who has hired an illegal has not broken the law.
@Cicero: techies which Facebook and Amazon, etc., and all tech businesses, always need more of.
Then they should pay more and hire Americans. There are many professions that we “need more of”, medical doctors, for example, and if there were massive hiring of medical doctors as H1-Bs that would lower salaries for American doctors and make it harder for Americans wanting to be doctors to get their foot in the door. It is the same for American tech workers.
Most of the tech H1-Bs are low-level positions. Not genius coders, but the kind of people who, if American, would be just starting out their careers. As it is, American workers are shoved aside in favor of foreigners who might need to leave the country if they make their boss unhappy.
We should careful parroting propaganda like “we need these people”. At any rate, most of the tech work can be done remote: if you must employ them, why not have them stay in India or wherever? There is no reason to bring them here and encourage their relatives’ chain immigration, depressing wages for whatever it is the relatives do–unless depressing American wages is the goal, which for the big players of course it is.
After the great immigration deal in 1986, it was common to see INS agents raid agricultural plants in our state and arrest and deport some/most of the workers at a plant. I happened to be at a place where this “raid” was taking place and asked the manager what he was going to do. He just smiled and said most of them would be back in a month with new fake ids. This was around 1987/88.
So this isn’t unprecedented by any means. But this isn’t 1988 either.
What is a problem in this area is the need for temporary, seasonal ag workers and we need a robust H2A program. These jobs won’t/can’t be met in the traditional ways, where migrant workers followed the harvest season from the southern states and slowly worked their way north.
@Brian E:These jobs won’t/can’t be met in the traditional ways,
They would if they were paid enough. Warren Buffet would pick your asparagus if he was paid enough.
He just smiled and said most of them would be back in a month with new fake ids.
Employers have very little latitude to reject documents. I was responsible for E-Verify implementation at a small business for a while (we were too small to have a real HR team), and I came away so unimpressed by what it actually does to stop people from working illegally, which is as near to nothing as its designers could come. But you do get audited to make sure you’re not discriminating when you hire…
The use of E-Verify comes with explicit permission to employ someone whose employment eligibility cannot be confirmed, though you are given the legal option to fire them–someone who’s already been employed by you for weeks or months at the point of final non-confirmation.
My blood pressure goes up whenever a conservative commentator says “mandatory E-Verify”. That is my red flag for “has not done minimal research”.
” …illegal aliens, a term I purposely use because it’s the old-fashioned legal phrase.”
At one time Chuck Schumer would have agreed with you and Tom Holman.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1078496926058700800
(Hat tip Instapundit)
Niketas, as to asparagus or other specialty crops, you might find enough workers for a six week-two month harvest season. I don’t know how it works in the Imperial Valley or areas down south– maybe with multiple growing seasons they could make it work.
Not sure how we could have a robust apple industry without temporary workers. It’s a $2 billion industry and we are the leading producer of apples in the country.
Farmers already have to pay above the state’s minimum wage plus the costs of bringing the workers from their home country. I don’t know how many farmers still hire illegals under the table, but this is one of the reasons why I don’t trust Republicans any more than Democrats when it comes to illegal immigration.
Tom Homan is exactly the kind of man I want and admire in law enforcement. No nonsense, straightforward, get the job done.
He reminds me of the sheriff of the town I grew up in. Eph (Ephraim) Holton was his name. He was a big man who was fair, plain spoken, and uncompromising about right and wrong. No one messed with him.
I think these sanctuary city/state advocates are in for a surprise. It’ll take some time, but Homan is a bulldog and will stay on it.
@Brian E:Not sure how we could have a robust apple industry without temporary workers.
By all means hire temporary workers; but it won’t kill orchardists to hire Americans like the rest of us have to. I myself picked apples once upon a time as temporary worker, and went to school with (white) kids whose families did it for a living, in the 80s and 90s.
Farmers already have to pay above the state’s minimum wage
So do most businesses. When I was hiring health care analysts and software engineers I had to offer every one of them substantially more than state minimum wage… It won’t kill farmers, who have a lot of things rigged in their favor, but let’s not open up the Ag can of worms.
Niketas, I had to smile when you lumped health care analysts, software engineers and apple pickers together. I hope you were paying the former professionals more than minimum wage!
Why does it matter that our ag products are competitive price wise? Because 1/4 of our apple production is exported and has to compete with countries that subsidize their own ag producers (let’s not get into whether our ag producers are also subsidized). We want exports.
I not going to report your for truancy, but shouldn’t you have been in school instead of working in the orchards? 🙂
I don’t know any orchardists, but I suspect we would be hard pressed to find enough temporary workers who would do that job even for $16.34/ hr. As you know, it’s hard work!
I’m partial to immigrants from Mexico, as I’ve seen found them to be entrepreneurial, ambitious and hard workers.
Cost shifting. The Third Man.
@Brian E: I hope you were paying the former professionals more than minimum wage!
Why? Every business wants to keep its costs low. Why do laptop class workers filling in spreadsheets deserve more money than people who do hard physical labor to feed people? It’s because “deserve” has nothing to do with it. It’s about supply and demand. What you are proposing with the ag workers and what goes on with the H1Bs is that the industry no like paying that price for labor, and they want the rules changed so they can have privileged access to a large pool of labor willing to work for less and so drop the market price.
Why does it matter that our ag products are competitive price wise?
Every sector of the economy can say this Brian, but they can’t all have the game rigged in their favor because rigging the game is zero sum. You can plead for the poor farmers who need foreign helots to keep their costs low to be “competitive”, and I can plead for the poor tech companies who need foreign helots to keep THEIR costs low to be “competitive”…
but we can’t all have our way.
I not going to report your for truancy, but shouldn’t you have been in school instead of working in the orchards?
I didn’t have to miss school for what I was doing. I was not trying to make a living at the work.
I suspect we would be hard pressed to find enough temporary workers who would do that job even for $16.34/ hr. As you know, it’s hard work!
I know lots of people who did harder seasonal work than that in Alaska, and it was because they were getting paid enough to make it worth their while. College students and people fresh out of college, but also trades like electricians. I would pick apples now if I were offered enough, and so would you.
I’m partial to immigrants from Mexico, as I’ve seen found them to be entrepreneurial, ambitious and hard workers.
Yeah, mostly they’re nice people, but my country is America and I think Americans should live here and do our work. Plenty of Americans are also entrepreneurial, ambitious and hard workers.