An accusation of not caring about migrant children infuriated former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan to such an extent that it prompted thoughts of a physical confrontation.
When questioning Homan, García accused the former ICE chief of not caring about illegal immigrant children “because these children don’t look like children that are around you.”
“How can you possibly allow this to happen under your watch? Is it because these children don’t look like children that are around you?” García asked, adding, “Have you ever held a deceased child in your arms?”
Homan responded angrily to García’s line of questioning: “First of all, your comments are disgusting!”
“I’ve served my country for 34 years and yes, I held a five-year-old boy in my arms … and I knelt down beside him and said a prayer for him because I knew what his last 30 minutes of his life were like,“ he added. “No one has experienced what I’ve experienced. I saw many dead bodies coming across this border.”
García has not responded since the hearing, though he continues attacking the Trump administration on Twitter, recently calling the president “racist and divisive” and calling on him to “stop criminalizing desperation” amid the left-wing push for open borders.
Homan and multiple Democrat representatives got into testy exchanges during the hearing.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tried questioning Homan about a memo Homan signed while head of ICE recommending “zero tolerence” on the border crisis.
“I recommended zero tolerance,” Homan told the lawmaker after a back-and-forth.
“Which includes family separation,” she countered.
“The same as it is with every U.S. citizen parent that gets arrested with a child,” Homan quickly replied.
Ocasio-Cortez went quiet for a few seconds, before saying, “Zero tolerance was interpreted as the policy that separated children from their… .”
Interrupting, Homan replied, “If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child in the car, I’m gonna be separated.”
“When I was a police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I separated that father from his home,” he added.
Ocasio-Cortez replied, “Mr. Homan, with all due respect, legal asylees are not charged with any crime.”
Before she had finished the sentence, Homan responded, “When you’re in this country illegally, it’s violation 8, United States Code 1325.”
“Seeking asylum is legal,” she claimed.
“If you want to seek asylum, you go through a port of entry,” he responded. “Do it the legal way. The Attorney General of the United States has made that clear.”
Homan told Fox that Democrats kept making false statements and accusations and would interrupt him when he tried to respond.
He said the hearing was “political theater.”
“They didn’t want to hear the truth. They wanted to push their narrative and not let me speak,” he said.
“They wanted me to get up and walk out and I wasn’t gonna give that to them.”
