Homan accuses Democrats of trading national security for political power through open-border strategy

Border czar Tom Homan took direct aim at Democratic governors and their party's immigration record Tuesday, charging that four years of open borders under the Biden administration were not a policy failure but a calculated bid to reshape the electoral map and consolidate future political power.

Appearing on Newsmax's "National Report," Homan singled out New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill as leading the resistance to the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, and laid out what he described as a deliberate, multi-step strategy by Democrats to use illegal immigration as a vehicle for gaining seats in Congress.

The accusation is blunt and worth examining on its own terms: that the Biden-era border crisis was engineered, that millions of illegal immigrants were funneled into sanctuary cities to inflate census counts, and that Democratic leaders now fighting deportations are protecting a political investment, not defending civil liberties.

Homan's case: 'By design,' not by accident

Homan did not hold back about what he believes motivated Democratic opposition to enforcement. As he told Newsmax:

"Number one is about hatred for President Trump. They don't want President Trump to have a win."

But the border czar went further, arguing that personal animus toward the president is only part of the equation. The deeper play, he said, involves the census and congressional apportionment.

Homan claimed Democrats released millions of illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities with the explicit goal of counting them in the next census, a move made possible, he argued, after a Trump-era census rule was overturned. More seats in the House for blue-state districts. More electoral votes. A structural advantage built not on persuading citizens but on importing a population that, under a future Democratic administration, could be granted legal status.

"That four years of open borders wasn't an accident. It wasn't mismanagement. It wasn't incompetence. That was by design."

Whether one accepts every link in that chain or not, the underlying logic tracks with a concern that millions of conservative voters have raised for years: that unchecked illegal immigration shifts political power toward the jurisdictions most willing to tolerate it, regardless of what legal citizens in those places, or anywhere else, actually want.

Hochul and Sherrill in the crosshairs

Homan reserved particular criticism for Hochul, questioning her credibility as a sudden defender of immigrant welfare after four years of silence during the Biden administration's border policies.

"Where was she with four years of open borders, where millions of illegal aliens, many of them criminals, released in the United States? Where was she then? She was complicit. She didn't say a thing."

The point lands because it highlights a pattern familiar to anyone watching blue-state governors over the past several years. When the Biden administration presided over record border crossings, Democratic leaders offered little public objection. Now that the Trump administration is enforcing the law and removing people who entered illegally, those same leaders have found their voices, and their lawyers.

That kind of selective outrage is not principled opposition. It is political positioning. And Homan said so plainly, accusing Democrats of caring nothing for national security or public safety.

"They don't care about national security. They don't care about public safety. All they care about is future political power. They sold this country out for future political power."

The administration has faced resistance from multiple directions as it moves to reassert immigration enforcement. Even some Republican senators have sided with Democrats on procedural fights over Trump administration appointments, a reminder that the opposition is not always neatly partisan.

Delaney Hall and the fight over ICE detention

Homan also pushed back hard against critics of the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. Complaints about conditions at the facility, including allegations about food quality and medical care, have become a flashpoint in the broader campaign against immigration enforcement.

The border czar said he visited Delaney Hall unannounced on Saturday and ate a meal alongside detainees. He described the food in detail:

"Spaghetti and meat sauce and salad and charro beans and green beans and rolls and butter and fruit drink."

He added, with evident satisfaction: "I'm a pretty big guy, and I didn't even finish the whole meal. I couldn't finish the whole meal."

The point was not culinary commentary. Homan was calling the complaints about detention conditions politically motivated fabrications, and tying them to a broader campaign he says is aimed at dismantling ICE altogether.

"This is about shutting down ICE detention. This is about stopping ICE. This is about abolishing ICE."

He went further, expressing open contempt for elected officials he accused of lying about conditions to advance that goal:

"It disgusts me that a member of Congress or a governor would lie about conditions of detainment only to get to their political end, which is end ICE detention, end ICE operations. And it's simply not going to happen."

The Trump administration has shown a willingness to fight institutional resistance on multiple fronts. The recent effort to reclaim Border Patrol social media accounts from a retired official who refused to hand them over illustrates just how deeply embedded that resistance runs, even inside agencies nominally under executive control.

The census question no one wants to answer

Homan's census argument deserves more attention than it usually gets. The mechanics are straightforward: the U.S. Census counts all persons residing in the country, not just citizens. Congressional seats and Electoral College votes are apportioned based on total population. States and cities with large populations of illegal immigrants receive more representation, and more federal funding, than their citizen population alone would justify.

A Trump-era effort to add a citizenship question to the census was blocked. The reversal of that rule, Homan argued, removed the last safeguard against using illegal immigration to pad population counts for political advantage.

Democrats dismiss this framing as conspiratorial. But the math is not complicated, and the incentive structure is real. Sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE attract and retain larger populations of illegal immigrants. Those populations get counted. Those counts determine representation. And the officials who benefit from that inflated representation are the same ones fighting hardest against deportation.

That is not a conspiracy theory. It is an observable feedback loop. Whether it was "designed" or merely tolerated, the result is the same: American citizens in states that enforce the law get diluted representation while jurisdictions that defy federal immigration authority get rewarded.

Meanwhile, the administration continues to push institutional overhauls across federal law enforcement. FBI Director Kash Patel's sweeping reorganization, moving a thousand agents to field offices and cutting $300 million, reflects the same philosophy driving Homan's enforcement push: get the bureaucracy out of Washington and back to doing its job.

The real question Democrats won't face

Homan's interview raised a question that Democratic governors have consistently dodged: if the Biden administration's border policies were genuinely about compassion, why did those policies coincide so neatly with the political interests of the party that implemented them?

Hochul and Sherrill are not defending some abstract principle of due process. They are defending a status quo that delivered millions of new residents to their states, residents who, under current law, count toward their congressional delegations. Removing those residents through lawful deportation does not just enforce immigration law. It threatens the political arithmetic that benefits blue-state Democrats.

Homan's charge, that Democrats "sold this country out", is strong language. But the underlying question is legitimate, and no Democratic governor has offered a serious answer. Where were they during four years of record illegal crossings? Why did they stay silent when their cities were overwhelmed? And why do they only speak up now, when enforcement threatens to undo the population gains their jurisdictions quietly absorbed?

The pattern extends beyond immigration. Democratic lawmakers have staged protests over congressional maps and redistricting fights, making clear that the battle over representation, who counts, where, and how, is never far from the surface of every partisan confrontation.

Homan made clear that the administration has no intention of backing down. ICE detention will continue. Deportations will proceed. And the political class that built its power on tolerating lawlessness will have to find a new strategy.

When enforcing the law becomes controversial, the problem is not the enforcement. It is the people who got comfortable breaking it.