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White House border czar Tom Homan defended the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Sunday, telling CNN’s Dana Bash that they are receiving death threats and attacks daily.
Homan was asked about a recent viral video of a U.S. citizen allegedly being arrested by ICE officers in Florida despite his insistence that ICE doesn’t arrest legal citizens.
He said that while he was not aware of every specific case, citizens may be briefly detained and questioned if there’s “reasonable suspicion” they committed a crime.
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“So there‘s reasonable suspicion that you‘re talking about, there is releasing somebody once they‘re comfortable that they are a U.S. citizen and then there‘s just the aggressive tactics that we are seeing in video after video,” Bash said. “You‘re comfortable with those tactics? Tactics that we‘re all seeing with our own eyes?”
“Look, threats on ICE officers are up 1,200%,” Homan answered. “They‘re being doxxed on social media. They‘re getting death threats every day. They‘ve been attacked. They‘ve been shot at. And you know, these officers are out there looking for the worst of the worst. So they‘re protecting themselves. And I think they‘re following the law. And if any ICE officer acts out of policy or does something inappropriate, they‘ll be held accountable.”
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He continued, “But we‘ve got to remember, I mean, they‘re under attack. And we‘re at a place in this country where, all of a sudden, the ones who enforce law are the bad guys and the ones who broke the laws are victims. I‘m going to trust the men and women of ICE and Border [Patrol] who have been trained very well to do the right thing. But I‘ll say again, if someone does something inappropriate, out-of-policy [or] illegal, they need to be held accountable, But I simply think I haven‘t seen that.”
Fox News Digital reached out to ICE for comment.
Statistics released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in October showed that ICE officers were experiencing an 8,000% increase in death threats.
Homan’s CNN appearance came after ICE and the DHS launched Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown.
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Bash asked Homan about accusations that ICE officers are arresting citizens in Minneapolis based only on if they “look” Somali, after several Somalis were implicated in recent fraud schemes.
“Their appearance alone can‘t raise reasonable suspicion,” Homan said. “It‘s articulable facts, a lot of different facts to take into consideration. The Supreme Court just backed the Trump Administration up on this. I know a lot of the media says, ‘oh, the Supreme Court just justified racial profiling.’ That‘s not what the Supreme Court said. The Supreme Court said they agree with the way these operations are being conducted, because the standard of reasonable suspicion is being used by both ICE and the Border Patrol in the interior operations.”
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Fox News’ Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.