'Equal opportunity deporter': Tom Homan pushes back on ICE racial profiling claims

WASHINGTON, DC: Tom Homan, who serves as President Trump’s border czar, pushed back against claims that the administration’s immigration enforcement was based on racial profiling. He called those accusations “ridiculous” and said he considered himself an “equal opportunity deporter.”

Homan made the comments during an appearance on Fox News’ ‘Saturday in America’ with Kayleigh McEnany. He was responding to Angie Nixon, a Democratic Senate candidate from Florida, who had warned on the ‘Miami Community Newspapers Podcast’ that ICE agents would target Black Americans through racial profiling during enforcement actions.

Angie Nixon warns ICE 'can't tell the difference'

"We're Black, [ICE is] gonna profile us, too," Nixon said on the ‘Miami Community Newspapers Podcast’.

"They can't tell the difference between an African-American or, you know, a Black American that is a descendant of slaves here in this country, or someone from Jamaica or Nigeria. Like, they are going to racially profile us, and they are going to escalate things, and they are going to shoot and kill us," she continued.

When asked by Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday about Nixon's comment, Homan called it a "ridiculous statement."

"Look, we don't racially profile. Everybody we talk to we have reasonable suspicion of aliens to talk to them. And to arrest them, we need probable cause," Homan said.

"That's what the law says and that's we do. We don't arrest people based on the color of their skin."

Tom Homan says ICE enforcement applies regardless of race

Homan then offered his own framing of how the administration approaches enforcement.

"I deported people to 180 countries last year. So, I don't care if you're from Asia, you're from Europe, or you're from other countries. If you're in the country illegally, you'll be deported, regardless of the color of your skin," Homan said.

He pointed to the number of countries involved in deportations as he rejected the suggestion that ICE enforcement was directed at people based on race or ethnicity.

Supreme Court ruling renewed debate over ICE stops

Homan’s comments came not long after the Supreme Court’s decision in Perdomo v. Noem last year.

Despite Homan's comments, the Trump administration explicitly asked the Supreme Court last year to block a lower court's order prohibiting immigration officers in Los Angeles from using racially loaded factors as justification for arrests.

The lower court had tried to stop officers from using factors like someone’s ethnicity, what language they speak, their accent, where they hang out, or what kind of job they have as grounds for making immigration stops. The Supreme Court put those restrictions aside.

Homan's assertion that ICE does not rely on racial factors when making stops sits in tension with the administration's own legal position, which successfully argued before the Supreme Court that such considerations should be permissible.