Rather Than Back Down, Trump Must Escalate His Campaign For Mass Deportations
The Trump administration can't allow its deportation policies to be dictated by the outrage of the left and the propaganda press.Trump overturns his own DHS, orders ICE back into traffic stops
Barely 24 hours after the Department of Homeland Security quietly ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stand down on vehicle stops nationwide, President Donald Trump did a U-turn.
Trump overturned the pause on Wednesday, and according to sources familiar with the matter, he was furious.
'Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won't happen on my watch.'
Trump made the call himself, first on Truth Social, writing that "we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.'s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!"
He added that the "Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won't happen on my watch" and that the agency should "be judicious, fair and smart" going forward.
The reversal capped a chaotic 24 hours. The DHS sent officials word via email on Tuesday pausing all vehicle stops "immediately" and instructing officials "to prioritize other existing operational methods, outside of vehicle stops, to conduct immigration enforcement activities," according to ABC News, which reviewed the email.
By Wednesday morning, the White House confirmed with Fox News that Trump had overturned the memo, calling it an internal directive that didn't reflect broader policy.
Border czar Tom Homan downplayed the original pause on Fox News, insisting the DHS just wanted to review the recent shootings and any training gaps.
"It's not a policy change; it's a temporary pause," Homan said, adding that the decision was made by "the secretary along with leadership at ICE."
RELATED: ICE slams the brakes on vehicle stops nationwide: Report
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin was already under pressure before Trump weighed in. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she spoke to Mullin Monday night and personally urged him to halt "non-urgent vehicle stops."
Once Trump's reversal went public, Mullin didn't directly address whether stops would actually resume. Instead, he pivoted to attacking Democrats, writing on X that DHS' "#1 goal is to keep our officers safe and get criminals OFF our streets," and telling anyone in the country illegally to "LEAVE NOW."
The whiplash traces back to the fatal shootings of two men during ICE enforcement operations in the last week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7 and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday. A third man died Tuesday in Florida after being struck by a tractor trailer while fleeing federal agents, according to authorities.
In the wake of the shootings, the DHS also pledged to rapidly deploy body cameras to ICE officers nationwide.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
'Now you've FORCED us': Homan says NY governor's effort to protect illegal aliens will BACKFIRE in Glenn Beck interview
Border czar Tom Homan said the efforts by Democrats in New York to protect illegal aliens from deportation are going to backfire very soon.
During an interview with Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck, Homan argued that the sanctuary city policies made everything worse for the public as well as the immigrant community.
'It results in more agents in the streets, it results in more collateral arrests, and it's a community safety issue, when you release a public safety threat back into the public.'
He said the Justice Department was filing lawsuits to combat the sanctuary city policies and then held up Minnesota as a successful example of local authorities cooperating with federal law enforcement.
"The way we fixed Minnesota, we gained support from the local sheriffs so we can arrest the bad guy in the safety and security of a jail, which is safer for the agent, safer for the alien, and safer for the community," Homan said.
He said this led to "unprecedented support" from Minnesota officials and safer detentions and removals. Homan said he tried to explain the same to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat.
"I explained this to Governor Hochul. And I said, 'When you force us into the street, we gotta send teams out there to do that.' And when we find the bad guy, which we will, many times they're with others, others that are in the country illegally. May not be a public safety threat, but they're coming too."
"It results in more agents in the streets, it results in more collateral arrests, and it's a community safety issue when you release a public safety threat back into the public," he added.
When Beck asked how Hochul responded, Homan laughed and said she signed the sanctuary policies despite his warning.
"And that's why I told her, 'OK, now you've forced us to send more agents to New York to enforce immigration law, when it would have taken less because you took the efficiencies of the jail away,'" he continued.
"And what she's ignoring is the fact, now we can't rent a bed from the sheriff," Homan said. "So every illegal alien we arrest in New York will be immediately put on an airplane and sent out of the state. How does that benefit the immigrant community?"
"They have no access to their family because we moved them out of state," Homan continued. "So, this wasn't about protecting the immigrant community. This is about her supporting sanctuary policy."
RELATED: California Democrat calls for ICE to be abolished after 'record' illegal alien arrests
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's attempt to protect illegal immigrants just completely backfired, @RealTomHoman tells me. Here’s what will happen next:
“What sanctuary cities are causing, because of their policies, is we're going to flood the zone.
I told her, ‘Okay, now you've… pic.twitter.com/Ceg0JnJ3gj
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) July 7, 2026
He concluded that the administration is forced to respond with a surge into New York.
"What sanctuary cities are causing, because of their policies, is we're going to flood the zone," Homan said.
"All these new resources are going to be assigned to sanctuary cities because that's where the problem is. We don't have that problem in Florida. We don't have that problem in Texas. The sheriffs and chiefs are working with us," he added.
Homan also recently revealed that ICE had arrested a record 10,000 illegal aliens in a five-day period, and the agency was ramping up to increase those arrests even further.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
California Democrat calls for ICE to be abolished after Homan announces 'record' illegal alien arrests
A Democratic congressman in California reiterated his call to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a record high number of arrests was reported.
Border czar Tom Homan appeared on Fox News and lauded the historic number of arrests over the five-day period while talking about the effort to strip commercial licenses from illegal aliens.
Federal officials had been able to rescind over 28,000 commercial licenses that were being held by illegal aliens.
"In the last five days, ICE has arrested over 10,000 illegal aliens, which is a record for the agency," Homan said to Fox host Dana Perino. "So we're hitting on all cylinders. There's just a lot of these people to find, but we are out there every day looking for them."
He suggested that officials in states like New York were sheltering illegal aliens from these federal investigations.
"The problem is, we're working very well with red states; in blue states it's still a struggle, right? Places like New York, I mean, ICE and CBP can't even get access to the DMV database!"
He added that federal officials had been able to rescind over 28,000 commercial licenses that were being held by illegal aliens since May 1.
In response, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted a statement on the X social media platform calling for ICE to be replaced.
"We cannot ignore their continued abuse and violation of human rights. It's time to abolish ICE and replace it," Khanna wrote in the post.
"These people being detained are being denied basic human rights," Khanna said in a video attached to the post.
RELATED: Majority of Americans approve of Trump's response to anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis: Harvard poll
"I was at the California detention center. I saw someone with blood in his urine who was denied medical care," he continued. "I saw rocks in the food. I saw people shivering because they didn't have clothes. We need to stop funding ICE that's violating human rights."
Homan went on in the Fox interview to accuse sanctuary mayors and state governors of "normalizing" illegal immigration by allowing illegal aliens to have driver's licenses.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Trump needs to denounce the Dignity Act
Florida Rep. Maria Salazar (R) and her some 20 Republican co-sponsors of a massive amnesty bill have put President Trump in a terribly awkward position. In truth, it is more than just awkwardness; it is political malpractice.
The fanfare around the amnesty bill, the Dignity Act, has begun a process of division and distraction going into a crucial midterm cycle.
Merely floating the idea of amnesty results in more illegal immigration to the US border.
The Dignity Act is dominating conversations surrounding the trajectory of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration and forcing the question of whether the administration supports it.
Last week, CBS News peppered border czar Tom Homan with loaded questions about the supposed need for providing legal status for illegal aliens in the United States. After trying to put the question away, Homan responded, “There’s discussions going on. I’m involved with some and not others, but I’m not going to get ahead of the president on this.”
Discussions of amnesty in the Trump administration? The internet exploded, and it’s largely still exploding. Given the low level of deportations conducted to date, some 340,000 in FY2025 according to recent estimates, many political observers are starting to question whether the mass deportation program will be fulfilled at the scale advertised.
This low number, in addition to the lack of explicit opposition to the Dignity Act from the Trump administration, has led many people to reasonably believe that amnesty discussions are on the table. Republicans pushing amnesty is nothing new, after all. Additionally, the co-sponsors of the Dignity Act largely are all endorsed for re-election by President Trump.
What we are witnessing appears to be strategic ambiguity. Salazar and her allies are hitting the media circuits claiming that somehow the Dignity Act is not amnesty. That claim has rightfully been ridiculed, but they remain insistent that a square peg is a circle.
RELATED: The Dignidad Act is a complete betrayal of Republican voters
Meanwhile, the White House has carefully avoided criticizing the bill by name, instead choosing to rule out amnesty of any type. Take another Homan quote, for example: "I said from day one, I’ll say it again ... President Trump said amnesty is off the table. I support that. I don’t think amnesty should be on the table.”
Having known Homan for years, I know that he genuinely opposes amnesty. But in this environment, supporters of the president’s promised immigration agenda need to hear that the White House considers the Dignity Act to be amnesty. Without that explicit rejection, the ambiguity will be perceived as tolerance.
Of course, it is not the White House’s job to denounce every last bill that pops up in Congress. But the unfortunate truth is that the Dignity Act is out there and has captured enough attention that it is a subject of an intense debate that, if left untended to, will only dampen midterm turnout.
That’s one reason why what Salazar and her ilk have done is so damaging. Shilling for amnesty will be taken seriously unless explicitly denounced, putting the White House in a position it should not be in.
Salazar’s damage gets worse. Take for example what Homan said during his CBS interview that did not receive any meaningful attention: “I would love Congress to do some things. My concern right now is that a lot of the successes we’ve had, unprecedented success, is based on executive orders, which can certainly be turned around by the next president.”
What Homan was referring to are border security laws to prevent a future Democrat administration from doing the exact same thing that Biden did and demanding amnesty in exchange for turning off another invasion.
How do I know? Well, I worked with Homan to help put together H.R. 2, otherwise known as the Secure the Border Act of 2023, during the Biden years. That bill was purely defensive in nature. It closed loopholes that the Biden administration weaponized to let 10 million plus cross the border.
RELATED: Funding is useless if Democrat judges can still hold ICE hostage
While it is true that President Trump didn’t need new laws to secure the border, it is also true that President Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, or Comey won’t need new laws to open it again. We could find ourselves in the exact same negotiating posture as before: trade border security for amnesty, the very same trick that President Reagan fell for in historic fashion.
Any serious person who has worked in the immigration space knows that merely floating the idea of amnesty results in more illegal immigration to the U.S. border. During the Obama years, illegal aliens were flowing across with smiles on their faces and bragging about the “permisos” they had to cross due to Obama. As Biden readied to enter the White House, illegal aliens flooded the border for the same reason.
With news emerging that the U.S. border may not be as completely zipped tight as we hoped, Salazar’s advertising for amnesty can predictably result in more illegal aliens deciding to roll the dice and head north.
For all these reasons and more, the wise thing for both political and national sovereignty reasons is for the Trump administration to respond to Salazar’s push with an explicit and unmistakable denunciation.
A skeptical base needs to see strength on the immigration issue. Clearing up any confusion on this matter would go a long way toward restoring trust and keeping the president’s strongest base of supporters together going into the midterm elections.
www.theblaze.com
www.theblaze.com
thefederalist.com
www.theblaze.com