By Jacki Thrapp
Border czar Tom Homan said on Feb. 15 he doesn’t like that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents wear masks during operations but said that face coverings are necessary for their protection.
“I don’t like the masks either, but because threats against ICE officers, you know, are up over 1,500 percent, actual assaults and threats are up over 8,000 percent, these men and women have to protect themselves,” Homan said during an interview with fill-in anchor Ed O’Keefe on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”
Homan also pushed back on other policy changes proposed by Democrats that could reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after its funding expired on Feb. 14, triggering a partial government shutdown.
Proposals include requiring ICE agents to show IDs, wear body cameras, remove their masks during operations, obtain judicial warrants before they enter private property, and stop the alleged racial profiling of people on the street.
“They want to say, stop racial profiling. That’s just not occurring,” Homan said.
“I mean, ICE will detain, briefly detain and question, but question somebody based on reasonable suspicion. It has nothing to do with racial profiling.”
Homan, who previously served as a high-ranking official for ICE during the Obama administration, added that agents already do enough to identify themselves and reiterated the dangers that law enforcement officers and their families can face.
“Just yesterday, the director of ICE, his wife, was filmed walking to work,” Homan stated.
“His home address has been doxed. His kids have been doxed and filmed. So no, I don’t know of another agency in this country that has an 8,000 percent increase in assaults and threats.”
The Epoch Times contacted ICE for additional information and did not hear back by publication time.
During Sunday’s interview, Homan defended how immigration enforcement searches take place.
“Congress themselves wrote the Immigration Nationality Act that gave power on the administrative warrant to arrest somebody, and that’s what’s set up in federal statutes,” Homan said.
“So if Congress wants that change, then Congress can legislate. But right now, ICE is acting within the framework of federal statutes enacted by Congress and signed by a president.”
ICE operations across the country—especially “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota—have received pushback from communities who organized protests and took other actions in an attempt to stop the operations.
Two of the clashes with demonstrators took a deadly turn in Minnesota.
On Jan. 7, an ICE officer fatally shot a protester, Renee Good, in her SUV, as she allegedly hit him with her car during an ICE operation in Minneapolis.
Weeks later, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent and a customs officer as he protested their efforts to arrest an illegal immigrant with a criminal record.
Federal authorities said the officers acted in self-defense during the shootings.
During the operation in Minnesota, which ran from December 2025 to early February, ICE agents located 3,364 missing unaccompanied children and arrested more than 4,000 people in the Minneapolis area, according to Homan.
