Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, admitted Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is racially profiling the immigrants being rounded up in raids across the country.
“People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol, they don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” Homan said on Fox News, adding that he says ICE agents can detain people “based on … their physical appearance.”
Indeed, the Trump administration’s racial profiling has led multiple U.S. citizens to be wrongfully detained by ICE agents, who, under orders from bigoted White House aide Stephen Miller, have been told to arrest 3,000 immigrants per day to meet an arbitrary deportation goal. That evil order is actually making Americans less safe since ICE officers say they are unable to focus on prioritizing criminals and instead must round up immigrants who are contributing to the U.S. economy, all to meet Miller’s goal.
Racial profiling—as Homan admits ICE is doing—is patently illegal.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that the United States cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” And courts have ruled that targeting someone based on what they look like is a violation of that amendment.
“This is patently false,” Democratic Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York wrote in a post on X, referring to Homan’s comments. “DHS has authority to question and search people coming into the country at points of entry. But ICE may not detain and question anyone without reasonable suspicion—and certainly not based on their physical appearance alone. This lawlessness must stop now.”
Of course, the fact that the law prohibits something is not a deterrent for Trump, who not only is too stupid to understand the document but also simply doesn’t care about following the law when it gets in his way.
Still, Homan’s admission on Fox News that ICE is targeting people based on their appearance could be used against the Trump administration in lawsuits seeking to stop ICE raids across the country.
Ultimately, not only are the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policies breaking the law, they are also backfiring. New polling shows that support for immigration in the United States is up this year.
A Gallup survey released Friday found that 79% of Americans believe immigration is good for the country—a record high. And just 30% want immigration to be reduced, down from 55% in 2024.
“These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups,” Gallup said of its polling.
Gallup also found that just 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, with a whopping 62% disapproving. That includes 69% of independents who disapprove of Trump’s immigration policy, with 45% of those independents strongly disapproving.
Turns out, racially profiling immigrants, erecting concentration camps on U.S. soil, and deporting people to torture prisons is not good politics. Go figure.