FIRST ON FOX: Border czar Tom Homan is firing back against attacks from local politicians in a major "sanctuary city" while warning illegal immigrants that they need to be "looking over their shoulder" in the days and weeks ahead.
Fox News Digital asked Homan about comments made by Boston City Councilor Sharon Durkan, who responded to comments made by Homan at CPAC, who said he was "bringing hell" with him to Boston and criticized the police commissioner for not working with ICE.
"She needs to put her U.S. citizen taxpayer constituency ahead of illegal aliens who rape children," Homan told Fox News Digital. "I'm not coming for her, she shouldn't be afraid of me. Who should be afraid of me are those in the country illegally. They need to be looking over their shoulder, because we’re coming."
BOSTON COUNCILWOMAN SOUNDS OFF AFTER TOM HOMAN'S CPAC PROMISE TO ‘BRING HELL’
"You're not a police commissioner," Homan said about Commissioner Michael Cox last week. "Take that badge off your chest. Put it in the desk drawer. Because you became a politician. You forgot what it’s like to be a cop."
Durkan responded by mocking Homan for serving as a police officer in the village of West Carthage, New York, in the 1980s before eventually heading Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and serving as a Border Patrol agent.
"Laughable that someone who spent their career policing a town smaller than a Fenway Park crowd thinks they can lecture Boston on public safety," Durkan's post on X read.
"Commissioner Michael Cox serves with distinction and earns trust with integrity," the city official continued. "Tom Homan should know, we don’t scare easy."
"Yes, I understand that Tom Homan spent his career as a federal agent within Border Patrol & ICE, but that’s a world away from the realities of policing a major city," she later clarified. "His background is in immigration enforcement, not community policing—where trust and accountability are key."
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Homan said Durkan should be grateful for ICE’s involvement.
"ICE has recently arrested nine illegal aliens, sexual predators in Mass., and removed them from the streets of Mass. She ought to be thanking ICE for making the streets safer," he said.
"And me coming there saying, ‘I'm going to bring some law enforcement resources to keep removing sexual predators from their communities and protect their children.’ She ought to be applauding ICE. She ought to support us. She ought, as the representative of a community, ought to be begging the governor and state legislature to end the sanctuary city policies and help ICE remove significant public safety trust from the communities," he said.
Boston is one of a number of "sanctuary" cities that limits state and local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, meaning that illegal immigrants with convictions or pending charges will be released back onto the streets rather than being turned over to ICE custody. Proponents of sanctuary policies argue it encourages cooperation with police from otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants.
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The Trump administration has ramped up interior ICE enforcement, with arrests skyrocketing compared to the same period last year. The administration has made international agreements to increase deportations and has taken certain Biden-era limits off ICE officers. Homan has been leading the charge.
Homan has said repeatedly that the target of the operations are public safety threats but that no one in the U.S. illegally is off the table. Speaking to Fox, Homan said critics of ICE’s work should speak to the victims of illegal immigrant crime.
"She ought to sit down and talk to a mother of one of these children that were raped by an illegal alien. This child will never be the same again. You would think she'd be putting them ahead of illegal aliens," he said.
He also dismissed the criticism of his background from Durkan.
"As far as me starting my career as a town cop, I truly believe it’s the community that raises you, it takes a community to raise a child, and the community that raises you, the first thing you do is to serve that community," he said. "I think it's the right thing to do. It's an American thing to do, and for a kid that grew up in a small community to become the ICE director – an agency of 21,000 law enforcement officers – I consider that the biggest honor of my life."
He also noted that ICE enforces hundreds of laws, many that have nothing to do with immigration enforcement, including drug smuggling, firearms trafficking and weapons of mass destruction.
"I want her to understand that ICE is a well-rounded federal enforcement agency, one of the biggest agencies," he said. "We’ve got over 400 statutes we enforce."
Fox News' Andrea Margolis and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.