Border czar Tom Homan tore into Sen. Cory Booker on Monday after the New Jersey Democrat staged a press conference at Newark Liberty International Airport to denounce the Trump administration's decision to deploy ICE agents to U.S. airports, calling the move an "outrage."
Homan, appearing on "Hannity," didn't mince words. He accused Booker of "driving the violence" against ICE agents and called him out directly for fabricating a narrative about the agency's enforcement operations.
He's misleading the American people, he is lying.
The confrontation distills a broader fight playing out across Washington: Democrats are escalating their rhetoric against immigration enforcement to increasingly reckless levels, and the people carrying out that enforcement are the ones paying the price.
Booker, speaking at Newark Liberty, painted a picture of an agency run amok, Fox News reported. He accused the administration of deploying an agency that has been "bursting into our schools, into our churches, into our hospitals, into our courts, and even into the homes of Americans." He then folded in the airport deployment, framing it as a cynical distraction:
He's taking that agency that is reckless and out of control and bringing them to our airports under the lie that somehow this is going to help deal with the long lines that he created in the first place.
Homan's response was a direct challenge. Not a rebuttal built on competing statistics or bureaucratic explanations. Just a simple demand for evidence:
I want him to give me one example, just one, when ICE went into a church to arrest somebody, or we went into a hospital to arrest somebody, or we went to an elementary school to arrest somebody. Just give me just one example. You know why he can't? Because there isn't any.
That's not a dodge. That's a man running enforcement operations telling a senator to put up or stop lying. Booker's rhetoric conjures images of federal agents storming Sunday services and kindergarten classrooms. Homan says it never happened.
Homan did acknowledge one occasion where enforcement came close to a sensitive location. An illegal immigrant ran into an "education center," and ICE agents followed.
You're damn right, we went in there and arrested him near the front door.
Near the front door. Not raiding a classroom. Not pulling someone out of a pew. An illegal immigrant fled into a building and agents pursued him. That's law enforcement. The distinction matters because Booker and his allies are deliberately blurring it. They take the fact that enforcement exists and dress it up as persecution. They describe lawful operations in the language of invasion.
Homan then flipped the script entirely, pointing out who actually did violate a place of worship:
But as far as planned enforcement operations in those places, [it] hasn't happened. [As a] matter of fact, the only people that violated the sanctuary of the church was Don Lemon and that group that went in there [into a church in St. Paul, Minnesota] to attack Trump supporters while they were having a religious service.
Booker isn't alone in this escalation. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went further, alleging that "untrained" ICE agents deployed to airports could end up "brutaliz[ing]" or even "kill[ing]" Americans.
Read that again. The House Minority Leader publicly suggested that federal law enforcement officers might kill American travelers at airports. No examples. No evidence. No sourcing. Just the naked assertion that immigration agents are potential murderers.
This is where the rhetorical arms race leads. Booker says ICE is "reckless and out of control." Jeffries says they might kill people. Each statement raises the temperature. Each one makes it slightly more acceptable for the next activist, the next protester, the next unstable person to treat ICE agents as legitimate targets.
Homan connected the dots plainly: this rhetoric is "driving the violence" against agents. He's not wrong to make that connection. When elected leaders describe federal officers as an occupying force that brutalizes and kills, they are constructing a moral framework in which resistance to those officers becomes justified.
This is a familiar playbook. Democratic leaders:
Booker claims Trump "created" the long lines at airports, folding the airport deployment into a narrative about a lingering DHS funding lapse. But the deployment of ICE agents to airports is an enforcement decision, not a staffing Band-Aid. Conflating the two lets Booker avoid the real question: should federal agents be empowered to identify and detain illegal immigrants moving through American airports? Conservatives would argue that's one of the most obvious places to conduct enforcement.
The senator would rather talk about lines than law enforcement. That tells you everything about his actual priorities.
There's a difference between opposing a policy and demonizing the people who carry it out. Booker and Jeffries have crossed that line. They aren't arguing that airport deployments are inefficient or redundant. They're arguing that the agents themselves are dangerous, reckless, and potentially lethal to the public they serve.
ICE agents don't get to hold press conferences at airports. They don't get cable news hits to tell their side. They show up, do the job, and absorb whatever political fire comes their way. The least their elected leaders could do is describe their work honestly.
Homan asked for one example. He's still waiting.