A former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that as a New Yorker and former law enforcement officer, he is outraged at what he called Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul's attempt at "political cover" when she condemned migrants' assault on police in Times Square.
Former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan said the attack on NYPD officers earlier this week is "personal."
"I own a home in New York so I pay a lot of taxes in New York. And I was a cop in New York," said Homan, who hails from upstate West Carthage.
Hochul responded to the assault by telling reporters, "Get them all and send them back – you don't touch our police officers. You don't touch anybody."
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Homan was not convinced.
"Governor Hochul, I don't care what she says because her actions speak louder than her words. She can say they should be deported. But, you know, it's only because there's a video out there going worldwide that she – it is just political cover for her," he said.
Homan added he is further outraged by local reports that at least some of the migrants – all but one of which were released without bail – approached a Catholic church in New York City and falsified a story as to why they needed bus tickets to California. Their whereabouts are reportedly unknown.
While Jhoan Boada, 22, Darwin Gomez, 19, Kelvin Arocha, 19 and Wilson Juarez, 21 were all released without bond, Yorman Reveron, 24, was found to have previous convictions and was assigned supervised release.
Yohenry Brito, 24, and Jandry Barros, 21, were arrested later and both charged with robbery and felony assault, after one officer's phone was stolen in the attack.
Homan said that if Hochul truly cared about deporting violent illegal immigrants, she would have taken action against perpetrators in two high-profile rape cases, including one where a hotel worker at a lodging requisioned for migrant housing was sexually assaulted, and another involving a Buffalo-area woman raped in front of her child.
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He added that a handful of laws, passed either under Hochul or predecessor Andrew Cuomo, make it harder to capture or punish illegal fugitives.
Homan pointed to the Green Light Law drafted out of the Democratic-majority State Senate and passed in 2019.
While the law focuses on allowing undocumented New York residents to apply for drivers licenses, Homan said it also includes language that has disallowed ICE from accessing Albany's criminal databases or Department of Motor Vehicles information.
Recently, some New York lawmakers such as U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and New York City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli, R-S.I., have collectively called on Hochul to change the Green Light Law to allow for federal authorities to have access to data in such situations.
"We live in an environment now where commonsense seems to have been let out of the barn," Fossella said in a joint 2022 statement from the lawmakers.
On "America Reports," Homan also took aim at a recent ruling against law enforcement that arose from a suit lodged by New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Kings County District Attorney Eric Gonzalez that blocked ICE from detaining illegal immigrants outside courthouses.
"It is one thing for the state courts to try to deal with the impediments brought on by a pandemic and quite another for them to have to grapple with disruptions and intimidations artificially imposed by an agency of the federal government in violation of long-standing privileges and fundamental principles of federalism and of separation of powers," Clinton-appointed Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in his ruling.
Homan said Hochul "created" the current problems and therefore can fix them, and that cases like the migrant assaults on the police lieutenant and his officers are a major contributor to law enforcement recruiting shortages.
