Donald Trump's 'Border Czar' Threatens to Jail Denver Mayor for Resisting Mass Deportation Plan
"Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing: he's willing to go to jail," Tom Homan said of Democratic Mayor Mike Johnston
Tom Homan, who was tapped to serve as the "border czar" in Donald Trump's upcoming administration, has already threatened a liberal lawmaker with incarceration if he resists Trump's mass deportation plan.
Homan, 62, is a former Border Patrol agent who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump's first term. Though he will not be an official Cabinet member in Trump's new administration, he "will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin," according to the president-elect.
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On Monday, Nov. 25, Homan issued a threat against Denver Mayor Mike Johnston after the Democratic leader promised to protect migrants in his city when Trump takes office and called on others to join him in protesting mass immigrant round-ups.
"Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing: he's willing to go to jail," Homan told Fox News host Sean Hannity. "I'm willing to put him in jail."
Johnston has said that he's "not afraid" of going to jail for pushing back against the Trump administration's immigration policies, though he hopes it wouldn't come to that.
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As a sanctuary city, Denver has been accommodating to immigrants in terms of jobs and legal aid, but Trump put a target on the metropolitan area when he called the nearby city of Aurora a "war zone" and claimed that Venezuelan gangs were taking over apartment buildings.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on in Denver, but we’re going to go in and we’re going to go and we’re going to fix it," Homan told Hannity. "If you don’t want to fix it, if you don’t want to protect his communities, President Trump and ICE will.”
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Homan said that if cities or states are noncompliant with new immigration and deportation policy, federal funding would be withheld from them.
Johnston is not the only politician to oppose the upcoming Trump administration's deportation plans. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have both taken a similar approach and have vowed to protect their cities' people.
"If you come for my people, you come through me," Pritzker said.