What Tom Homan Revealed on Laura Ingraham’s Show and Why It Matters
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Texas Border Business
Texas Border Business
A Fox News interview aired on The Ingraham Angle on November 25, 2025, featured former acting ICE director and designated “border czar” Tom Homan, who delivered a series of forceful claims about border security, illegal immigration, and the future size of the immigration enforcement workforce. Host Laura Ingraham introduced him during a discussion of Democratic criticism of an ICE oversight tracker and broader debates over how the public understands immigration enforcement.
When asked whether Democrats were correct in saying the ICE misconduct tracker was not a real-time monitoring tool, Homan responded with a lengthy, emphatic statement criticizing immigration policy under Democratic leadership. He said, “No. So the bottom line is if you support illegal immigration, then you support the criminal cartels of Mexico. ‘cause no one crosses the border illegally without paying a plaza fee to the criminal cartels. And, and I’m gonna remind everybody, and I’m gonna keep reminding these Democrats, where were you the last four years? Well, we had over 10 million people come to our border. We had a quarter of a million Americans who died from Fentanyl coming across the open border. We had a record number of people from terrorist sponsored countries coming across the border, sex trafficking, and women and children were at a historic high. You let half a million children be smuggled into the United States. You lost track of 300,000. You weren’t even looking for. It’s the Trump administration and President Trump’s leadership, where we’ve already found over 30,000 of them. We’re not gonna let ‘em forget. You are complicit in the biggest national security failure and the biggest humanitarian failure in the history of this nation. So you can scream and yell and do all these apps you want, but we’re not gonna let you forget. You are complicit. You support illegal immigration, then you support criminal cartels in Mexico. And when they smuggle people, they smuggle guns, they smuggle dope. So that’s who you’re supporting. Illegal migration is not a victimless crime. And if they don’t know that, they’re just simply ignorant.”
Later in the interview, Ingraham raised a New York Times story about identity theft involving an undocumented immigrant and argued that illegal immigration affects Americans in different ways, including financial harm. She contrasted that with a video clip from Representative Maxine Waters, who said she was committed to “This is an important press conference that is being held, to let you know what we’re all doing. Resisting this low-down, dirty, no good, filthy president of the United States of America.”
The discussion shifted to messaging and public opinion. Ingraham said some people now believe “people are just being rounded up,” pointing to media coverage she viewed as misleading. Homan replied, “The vast majority of media don’t wanna tell the truth,” And then cited arrest data as he interpreted it. He said that “between 60 and 70% of everybody ICE arrests is a criminal public safety threat,” adding that ICE had carried out “just under 650,000 total deportations since President Trump’s been in the White House.” Homan stated these numbers during the broadcast; no supplemental documentation was provided on air.
Ingraham also noted that some supporters on the right believe deportation efforts still fall short, given the size of the undocumented population. Homan responded by highlighting deterrence, saying “there are over 1.6 million of them” who he claimed left the country due to fear of enforcement, which he described as “self-deports.” He asserted that, combined with formal removals, “well over 2.2 million left the country already.”
The most significant new statement came when Homan described the future size of ICE’s enforcement workforce. Addressing critics who said removals are not happening quickly enough, he said, “Come put a badge and gun on and give us a hand. ICE is hiring record numbers.” He then added, “We’re hiring 10,000 more who will be on duty by mid-January. That’s tripling the size of enforcement, removal operations.” This figure—10,000 new hires expected to be active by January 2026—was presented solely as Homan’s claim during the interview.
Understanding the significance of such claims requires background on ICE. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is responsible for enforcing federal immigration laws inside the United States, conducting arrests, detaining certain individuals, and removing people with outstanding deportation orders.
Homan argued that many reports on ICE enforcement practices are inaccurate and misrepresent the agency’s practices. He said, “For instance, ICE has never been in elementary school. ICE don’t attack churches, but ICE don’t go into hospitals. But I read those stories every day. The vast majority of media just don’t wanna tell the truth. They wanna vilify Trump. And it’s hatred for Trump more than is the truth.” He added that, in his view, “these Democrats, governors, and mayors who constantly wanna attack President Trump… hate Trump more than they care about the safety and security of their communities because the data proves we’re, we’re removing the worst of the worst outta this country every single day across this nation.”
The interview ultimately provided insight into how Homan positions his approach to immigration enforcement and what he claims will be significant changes to ICE’s operational scale. However, the specific figures he cited—including the number of deportations, estimates of self-deportation, and the claim that 10,000 new ICE officers will be active by January 2026—remain claims made by Homan during the broadcast and have not been independently verified through other official channels.
Hiring 10,000 ICE agents is easier said than done
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is struggling to quickly hire 10,000 qualified agents for mass deportations, even as it offers signing bonuses of up to a year’s salary.
Why it matters: The agency has received a flood of applications and fast-tracked its training for some recruits. But it’s a huge challenge to add 10,000 agents to a force of 6,000, and White House border czar Tom Homan acknowledges a “high fail rate” on physical standards.
- “I mean, if you can’t run a mile and a half, you probably shouldn’t be a federal law enforcement officer,” Homan told Axios. Recruits have to do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.
- Some new recruits were described in an internal email as “athletically allergic,” according to reporting in The Atlantic.
- Others are failing tests on immigration law: “I’m concerned that every agent is fully trained in immigration law, Fourth Amendment training,” Homan said, referring to the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
Between the lines: There’s also continuous vetting to weed out poor recruits and bad actors, Homan told Axios.
- “They’re trying to push … the majority of the vetting up before they’re even offered a job [and start training],” he said.
- Drug use and criminal histories are immediately disqualifying, Homan added.
Zoom in: “ICE has received more than 175,000 applications, for 10,000 roles,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Axios. She would not say how many of those new applicants have been hired.
- ICE is offering a signing bonus of up to $50,000 to new deportation officer recruits. The job’s starting salary is just $49,739, according to one listing.
- The agency has spent more than $10 million on a national ad recruitment campaign and hosted in-person career fairs across the country.
The big picture: ICE agents have been accused in several court cases of illegally detaining U.S. citizens and of gratuitous use of force and tear gas.
- In Chicago, ICE agents now must wear body cameras, following a lawsuit.
- The agency said its officers are facing a drastic increase in assaults and that its tactics are justified.
- “You have the right to protest all you want, but when you turn criminal and you start throwing stuff at ICE, like in LA throwing Molotov cocktails … these men and women are putting themselves at great risk,” Homan said.
Flashback: Customs and Border Protection tried to hire about 10,000 new border agents in the 2000s, relaxing some training and requirements to reach recruitment goals.
- After the hiring spree, CBP saw an increase in corruption charges and convictions in its ranks, including for “smuggling of aliens and drugs,” according to a Government Accountability Office report published in 2012.
