Concerned About Arrest Quotas
On Tuesday’s episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, co-hosts Andrew Kolvet and Blake Neff spoke with Trump administration border czar Tom Homan about their fears surrounding President Trump’s decision to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports, a move that is supposedly meant to support Transportation Security Administration staff while the Department of Homeland Security is shut down.
“The overall pace of ICE arrests per day has doubled since last spring, so congratulations for that,” Neff told Homan. “But the rational follow up, of course, is: how much will — let’s say this airport strategy of the Democrats keeps going. Is there is a risk that this will significantly slow down those arrests? Like, could Democrats embrace this as a way to hamper immigration enforcement by diverting so many agents?”
ICE agents, of course, are still getting paid while the majority of the department is shut down because Republicans included a slush fund in their big budget bill last summer for the agency. Trump apparently called Homan over the weekend and suggested sending ICE into airports, theorizing that doing so would help TSA process people faster and cut down on the security wait times that have crippled travel. Photos of the flood of ICE agents at American airports paint a less productive picture.
For the Kirk show hosts, there are legitimate concerns to be discussed related to this decision to send ICE to the airports. Not because it puts the frequently out-of-control federal agents directly in the path of people — undocumented, those with legal status and U.S. citizens — entering and exiting the country during a time when having the wrong color of skin or posting the wrong kind of political content can put you in the administration’s cross hairs, but because it cuts down on ICE’s wildly successful — in these guys’ opinions — daily arrest ratios.
Homan responded saying that arrests might slow a little, but the hosts shouldn’t worry themselves.
Much like when Trump sent thousands of ICE agents into Minneapolis after backing down from his deployment of the National Guard into American cities where people were protesting ICE’s enforcement operations, Democrats have been warning that agents at airports is another, ominous step toward making ubiquitous in American life a federal law enforcement force that Trump has coopted.
Trump ally Steve Bannon had the same perspective, and, predictably, found it to be a wonderful development.
“We can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections,” he said on a recent episode of his War Room podcast, praising ICE agents in airports.
“I think this is part of a larger plan that the president has,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) recently told CNN of the ICE operation at airports. “These are all tools of how the president is trying to think about a much larger plan, which is, if you cannot hold onto power through democratic elections, then adjust democratic elections.”
This brings us to the more concerning portion of Homan’s remarks on the Charlie Kirk Show Tuesday, when the border czar, like many others in the Trump administration, including fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, suggested falsely that DHS has some authority over election administration. He refused to engage seriously with questions of whether ICE would be sent to polling places during the upcoming midterms. It’s something Democrats have been sounding the alarm about for months due to its potential to suppress voter turnout and/or inflame tensions in communities where Trump may hope to meddle with the results.
When asked for his “reaction” to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) recent remarks about not helping to fund DHS until Democrats are assured that Trump won’t send ICE into polling places, Homan responded by asking, “are illegal aliens voting?” Trump and his ilk have for years at this point elevated the myth that non-citizens are voting for Democrats en masse in federal elections, something that is both already illegal and not happening.
“I mean bottom line is, what’re they afraid of?” Homan asked, referencing Democrats’ concerns about ICE voter suppression. “They say illegal aliens don’t vote, but you know, part of DHS’ job is to secure elections and I’m not going to say — what our plan is going for. But if only U.S. citizens can vote, I don’t see the issue.”
Election experts have previously debunked similar claims about DHS’ role in elections, which you can read more about in the thread below:
Big picture, Homan offered an even greater degree of obfuscation than what we saw when Noem and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons were asked this question in recent weeks. No one will commit to doing it. And they’ll just as emphatically not commit to not doing it.
Trump Spin: Everything Is Going Great and No One Is Angry About ICE Anymore
In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, President Trump tried to create the narrative that the public’s perception of ICE agents has shifted dramatically since they’ve begun helping people carry bags at airports.
In reality, the actual federal employees who are tasked with running security at America’s airports don’t want them there.
“Look, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what ICE is doing up there. They just need to pay the [TSA] employees,” said TSA union leader Johnny Jones, the secretary treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees’ TSA Council 100.
“This is a straight-up distraction to the real story of TSA officers going to work without being paid,” he continued at a press conference on Tuesday. “The ICE officers are being paid. This is kind of like an insult to the employees.”
Sheriff Who Seized Ballots in California Shared Anti-Voting Rhetoric Online
The sheriff of California’s Riverside County who seized more than 650,000 ballots from the special election in which voters gave the state permission to engage in mid-cycle redistricting in order to offset the impact of Texas’ egregious Republican gerrymander has a history of sharing extreme views about voting online.
According to a new Democracy Docket report, Chad Bianco — a Republican running for governor who also has ties to the Constitutional Sheriffs movement and the Oath Keepers — posted on LinkedIn about his belief that “some people should never be allowed to vote,” alongside a slew of other social media posts perpetuating conspiracy theories about non-citizen voting.
Headline of the Day
Activist who pushed 2020 election fraud claims convicted of election fraud
In Case You Missed It
Emine Yücel has an update on WTF is happening in Congress today with DHS funding and Republican vows to try to jam the SAVE America Act into a reconciliation bill: 5 Questions About Thune’s DHS-and-Reconciliation Nightmare
Morning Memo: Minnesota Sues Feds for Evidence in Operation Metro Surge Shootings
John Light: Not So Fast
Where Things Stand: Trump Votes by Mail But He Doesn’t Want You to Be Able To
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Pam Bondi Finally Relents in US Attorney Fiasco
What We Are Reading
The MAGA Rebellion Over an $825 Million Plan for an ‘Arkansas Alcatraz’
Oklahoma hands over voter rolls to Trump DOJ, including personal data
Probably a dumb question:
Why is the Charlie Kirk Show still running under a dead man’s name?
Look on the positive side.
It’s the only way they can sponsors and listeners.
They should call it the Charlie Kirk Memorial hour, but they don’t have that much imagination.
The war which isn’t a war is winding down now that it’s been over for several weeks and with a little escalation our enemy which has been completely defanged will accede to negotiations so we can send them pallets of cash. ICE is big and strong and muscular and MANLY and young maidens in the heartland get the vapors when they see them moving trays back to the front of the x-ray machines or playing Candy Crush. Gas prices have never been lower and domestic producers are making money hand-over-fist from how high gas prices are. The SAVE Act will make girls be girls and boys be boys just like the good old days when Trump was a child and boys wore pink dresses until they turned 3. Any questions?
@lastroth MAGA loves sucking any residual value out of existing institutions, so why would Charlie Kirk’s propaganda network be any different?
Like all quasi-religious cults, the MAGAs love to fetishize a dead martyr — real or imagined.