Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan couldn’t care less that people are dying in ICE custody.
A reporter asked Homan Monday to respond to reports that Isidro Perez, a 75-year-old Cuban man who’d been living in the United States for nearly 60 years, died last week in ICE custody.
“I’m unaware of that, I’m not aware of that. I mean people die in ICE custody, people die in county jail, people die in state prisons,” Homan replied, brushing off that a man had just died on his watch.
“The question should be how many lives does ICE save? Because when they go in detention, we find many with diseases and stuff that we deal with right away to prevent that,” Homan said. Perez is at least the twelfth person to die in ICE custody so far this year, a notable uptick from previous years in line with the Trump administration’s directive to increase the rates of ICE arrests.
“People can argue with me all they want, but the facts are the facts. I think the politicians in New Jersey found this out, that we have the highest detention standards in the industry,” Homan said. He was referring to a group of three lawmakers the Department of Homeland Security previously claimed had stormed Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, last month.
Homan claimed that the lawmakers had found the standards of the 1,000-bed ICE detention facility to be “outstanding” and added that it was “probably the cleanest facility in that entire state.”
But crucially, the lawmakers who visited Delaney Hall last month never completed their inspection of the newly reopened ICE facility. A court filing in Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s lawsuit against Alina Habba, New Jersey’s acting U.S. attorney, stated that lawmakers were kept in a waiting room inside the facility for over an hour before they departed to join Baraka outside, where a wild confrontation ensued, resulting in Baraka’s arrest and landing Representative LaMonica McIver with assault charges, to which she pleaded not guilty last week.
New guidelines released by ICE this month asserted that lawmakers are not permitted to inspect ICE field offices and must give three days’ notice before arriving to inspect another facility, in violation of federal law. ICE claimed that lawmakers have no right to inspect field offices, because they are not detention centers, though the agency routinely holds immigrants at field offices and does not distinguish between those offices and larger detention centers, according to Democracy Docket.
Despite the illegality of ICE’s rule, lawmakers have been repeatedly locked out of ICE facilities. “They are undergoing conditions that are inhumane, in my opinion. They were not able to change their underwear for 10 days,” said California Representative Judy Chu, after she was blocked from entering a facility outside of Los Angeles.
Instead of encouraging more visits, Homan referred individuals concerned over safety standards to ICE’s website.
“Go to ICE.gov and look at our detention standards; it’s the highest detention standards in the industry at a very expensive cost to the taxpayers,” Homan said, adding: “Go look for yourself and then come back to me.”
ICE facilities’ poor conditions are well documented. The agency recently renewed a contract with a facility that was previously decommissioned for its failure to comply with health standards, and the DHS has been quick to brag about its “Alligator Alcatraz” tent facility in the middle of the Florida Everglades.
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