Advertisement

ICE chief pushes misinformation about Trump’s family separation policy on Fox News

Trumpist propaganda.

CREDIT: SCREENGRAB
CREDIT: SCREENGRAB

President Trump’s favorite TV show teamed up with acting ICE Director Thomas Homan on Monday to push blatant misinformation about Trump’s immigration policies that are resulting in children — including babies and toddlers — being forcibly separated from their parents at the southern border.

Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy began the interview by falsely asserting that family separation is a longstanding policy.

“What do people need to know regarding this? Because there is such an uproar about separation, which I understand has been on the books a long time,” Doocy said. Homan agreed with his assertion, saying, “Yes, it has.”

In fact, Trump’s family separation policy has only been on the books since April, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new “zero tolerance” policy for border-crossers. That policy resulted in accompanied minors being separated from their parents and placed in detention facilities — even when their parents are seeking asylum in the United States, which is legal, or when their parents have committed no crime beyond crossing the border, which is a misdemeanor.

Later, Doocy falsely insisted that Trump’s family separation policy is a law.

“You’ve been in law enforcement your whole career — you know that if you listen to the Democrats, the president could change the law and just say, ‘Hey, ICE guys, don’t enforce the law,'” he said to Homan.

Advertisement

But family separation is not a law. It is a policy — and one that Trump could end just as easily as he implemented it.

Nonetheless, Homan went on to make a bogus case that “the president’s hands are tied” and that congressional intervention is necessary.

The Homan interview came two days after Doocy defended Trump’s family separation policy by arguing that the media is unfairly describing cages as “cages.”

“And you know, while some have likened them to concentration camps or cages, you do see that they have those thermal blankets, you do see some fencing… some have referring to them as cages, but keep in mind this a great big warehouse facility where they built walls out of chain-link fences,” Doocy said on Monday’s edition of the show.

While Homan was allowed to spread misinformation on Fox & Friends with impunity, he had a slightly tougher time during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday evening.

Advertisement

After Blitzer pressed Homan repeatedly about whether he thinks separating children from their parents is “humane,” Homan retreated to the false talking point that “it’s a law and I’m law enforcement.”

On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Tuesday evening, Homan attempted to offer a response to “prominent people” who have compared his behavior to the actions of Nazis and the Roosevelt administration officials who interned Japanese people during World War II.

Without any sense of irony, Homan responded with the same argument that was unsuccessfully used by a number of prominent Nazis during the Nuremberg trials — the so-called “Nuremberg defense” noting that law enforcement officers are just following orders.

“I think it’s an insult to the brave men and women of the border patrol and ICE to call law enforcement officers Nazis. They are simply enforcing laws enacted by Congress,” Homan said.