Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan on Monday slammed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for their recent criticisms against his agency.
During a press call with reporters, Homan slammed Pelosi for characterizing ICE as a threat to immigrant communities.
“How dare she say we are terrorizing communities,” Homan said, arguing that it’s the immigrants in country illegally that ICE arrested who are posing the threat.
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Homan argued that ICE does not arrest innocent people and said that, during the agency’s operation in Los Angeles in February, 88 percent of the people arrested were convicted criminals.
He added that in all of California, 81 percent of those arrested by ICE were criminals.
“Her quote was beyond the pale,” Homan said.
“Just last week, President Trump decided to terrorize innocent immigrant families in the Bay Area with his unjust and cruel raids,” Pelosi said on Wednesday about recent ICE immigration raids. “The President has now desperately decided to brazenly abuse the legal system to push his mass deportation agenda.”
The acting director also went after Feinstein, who had said the Trump administration was targeting California to score political points with his base.
Homan said that ICE was merely enforcing immigration laws that Congress had empowered them to execute.
“If people don’t like it, people like Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein can certainly change the law, they are legislators,” Homan said.
He also criticized Feinstein for attacking ICE even though she voted in favor of the Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996 that gave ICE the authority to carry out such operations.
The ICE chief also recently went after Oakland’s mayor after she warned her city about upcoming immigration raids before they were carried out.
“She gave them warning, and there’s 800 that we were unable to locate because of that warning, so that community is a lot less safe than it would have been,” Homan said on “Fox & Friends.”
The Trump administration sued California last week over three laws that it claims prevent immigration officials from enforcing federal immigration laws.
Trump will visit California for his first time as president on Tuesday to inspect prototypes for his proposed wall along the southern border.