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President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Monday that plans have been laid out to flood the Big Apple with more ICE agents “than you’ve ever seen” after he repeatedly warned Gov. Kathy Hochul of an impending surge.
The top Trump administration official doubled down on his threats to flood New York City with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after Hochul and Albany Democrats passed sweeping sanctuary state laws last month curbing local cooperation with federal authorities.
“I made her a promise, you’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan said during an interview with “Fox and Friends.”
“I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming,” he said on Fox News.
“I’m keeping my promise, we’re going to send more ICE agents to New York because you took away the efficiencies of safer arrests at county jails “
Homan said he previously warned Hochul that if ICE can’t work with jail officials in New York counties, federal authorities will find other ways to track down targets.
He added that the lack of local cooperation could spark panic if agents conduct crackdowns in neighborhoods.
“If we can work with the sheriff’s and arrest the bad guy in the safety and security of the jail, that means less teams into the neighborhoods, which causes a lot of panic, a lot of problems,” Homan said.
“Now we gotta send a whole team to find this person who doesn’t want to be found.”
He added about Hochul: “I told her it’s safer for the community, it’s safer for the officers, it’s safer for the aliens to have these cooperations with the jails. She signed the legislation anyway.”
The sprawling legislative package, which Hochul signed into law in late May, blocks local police from partnering with federal immigration authorities and bars ICE from most public spaces across the Empire State, including hospitals and parks.
It also restricts agents from wearing masks while conducting operations.
Hochul blasted Homan’s move on Monday, accusing him of going “in a different direction” than what she said the president initially signaled to her about ICE manpower in the city.
The Democratic governor said Trump explicitly told her during a face-to-face meeting he wouldn’t deploy federal agents to the Big Apple unless she asked.
“I’m not asking now – that’ll never happen,” Hochul stressed during an unrelated press conference in Manhattan.
“I want to make sure that we keep this city safe. As someone who used to live in this city, who has properties here, has friends here, I would think that the president, a former New Yorker, would understand we want to all keep this city safe.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, when asked about Homan’s comments, ripped ICE raids as “cruel” and “inhumane” — and called for the agency to be abolished.
“We have heard time and again threats of increases in immigration enforcement across our city. I want to be very clear about the fact that I believe that ICE raids are cruel; they are inhumane; [and] they do nothing to serve in the interest of public safety,” he told reporters.
“I’ve shared that directly with the president [and] I’ve shared that in public,” Mamdani noted. “It is a feeling that many New Yorkers share and I also do believe that ICE as an entity is one that should be abolished and that we should return to an immigration system that has more humanity at the heart of it.”
Hochul, who is up for re-election this year, had vowed to restrict ICE activity in New York after immigration agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.
The gov in January proposed scraping agreements with the feds that would have allowed local jails to hold migrants for ICE. The feds’ most comprehensive pact is with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the pro-Trump Republican looking to unseat her in November.
The measure now prohibits all “information cooperation,” such as a local cop calling iCE if they believe they have an undocumented migrant in custody.
Republicans vehemently opposed the significantly ratcheted up package, which passed both chambers of the state Legislature.
Homan has repeatedly threatened to unleash a wave of ICE agents statewide if lawmakers passed sanctuary laws, but has not yet followed through on those warnings.
Meanwhile, Hochul has made clear she does not want more of an ICE presence in the state.
“All I’ll say to Mr. Homan is Donald Trump himself said he would not send a surge of ICE agents to the state of New York, unless I asked,” Hochul said in May.
“I’m not asking.”
Hochul on Monday insisted that New York is not a “sanctuary state for criminals,” arguing her hot-button measure was designed to ensure local police and jails are used to stop local crime.
“I have a right to protect every single New Yorker,” she said, telling ICE: “do your job somewhere else.”
“In New York, our local police need to be focused on local crimes not filling up our jails with people who ICE had taken off streets, out of our schools, out of our pizzerias, out of our homes, and I’m not going to be part of that,” Hochul continued.
“So we’ll help you with the criminals – always have, always will – but we’re not going to be helping with civil immigration enforcement. I think that’s a common sense approach.”
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