White House border czar Tom Homan said Thursday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be scaling back, that the surge in Minnesota is effectively over, and to that hallelujahs rang out. The presence of ICE was calamitous and heartbreaking.
But we’re scaling back, he said. We are leaving.
Homan knew perfectly well that he couldn’t admit chaos or in any way reflect poorly on his employer. It was a bit like the city burned down and Homan could not really apologize for the agency’s campfire jumping its ring of rocks.
Homan was a Barack Obama appointment in 2013, named by President Obama as the executive associate director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In 2015, Obama awarded Homan a Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive. He was named acting director of the agency by President Donald Trump in 2017.
Homan has never looked or sounded the part, of a distinguished executive that is. He has the nasal stamp of a fight manger with an up-and-comer under his wing at Gleason’s Gym, 130 Water St., Brooklyn, N.Y. He is a New Yorker, but from West Carthage, way up in the northwest corner of the state. He is a third-generation lifelong cop, just as his grandfather and father. Now he wears suits and gratefully enough wore a suit when he came to town to act the role of the adult in the room. His appointee here, Greg Bovino, wore an overcoat of theatrical rank and a Sam Brown belt. That didn’t help.
It is not at all untoward to congratulate Homan and even thank him, although the ICE sins were of such gravity that it is unlikely anybody out on the street would bake him a pie. But he was the desperately needed adult, apparently successful in convincing the governor, Tim Walz, and the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, to tone down their hectoring, which was tantamount to fanning the flames so dangerously escaping the fire.
This state could not have taken much more. It was a horrible and intrusive 72 days or so, two people shot dead, children taken, disorder and fear around every corner. It was a lousy deal. In the coldest stretch of the year, the citizens turned out every day and every night to confront, to shriek, to question, to bang drums, to blow whistles and to plead. It is probably a miracle that even Homan’s superiors knew that lines were being crossed and that this surge was not working.
Homan, get to Minnesota.
And if his arrival and the outcome is a miracle, we’ll take it.
Now what do we do? So long as Trump steers his presidency by grievance and personal affronts, ICE could return. Trump does not win Minnesota and his dander is unpredictable, as blue states in particular incur his wrath.
But the chaos cannot all be blamed on Washington. Minnesota, and Minneapolis especially, are governed by democratic socialists who are predisposed to holding law enforcement in contempt. Well, ICE deserved what it got, but a functioning city cannot continue to hold dear blatant separation ordinances that require local officials to ignore federal law. There has to be a better way. There must have been a better way. Homan and his first boss, Obama, deported approximately 3 million people, a record, and there wasn’t a peep from Minnesota, not a peep. In fact, Obama was called the “Deporter-in-Chief.”
I wanted to ask Homan what the difference was between then and now. I got as close as being in the same building with him when he arrived at KSTP-TV for a Tom Hauser interview. But Homan’s schedule was tight and I was informed, forget it, pal.
OK. But the difference is important. If ICE comes back, it better have specific targets and a specific plan. Don’t tell us, just do it.
And for our part, God willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll have a different governor and a different mayor in Minneapolis.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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