New York just handed Tom Homan a list of numbers he was not going to let slide.
Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani rolled out a new round of anti-ICE measures and called it protecting children.
Homan went on Hannity and read them the receipts.
What New York Did and Why Homan Exploded
The latest collision began when Hochul, Mamdani, and Attorney General Letitia James announced $7.25 million in state funding to provide legal services for approximately 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children facing removal proceedings. The state says the money is necessary because a federal legal-services contract expired July 31.
Hochul accused the Trump administration of “walking away” from vulnerable children. “No child in our state should ever face the fear and uncertainty of the immigration process without advocates and legal support in their corner,” Hochul said.
That framing is what set Homan off.
“I’m sick of the lying. I’m sick of the distortion of the facts!” Homan declared on Fox News’ Hannity.
Homan fired back: “Now they want to spend millions of dollars of New York taxpayers’ money on defending migrant children because they said we abandoned them. No, we didn’t abandon them. We just changed contracts. We have a contract in place right now that defends the children at a better rate than what was being done in the past. There hasn’t been one child at a hearing that hasn’t been represented by a lawyer under this new contract.”
And then came the number.
“The only people abandoning children are you because you say you care about the safety of the children, you care about the safety of the communities — well, since I’ve been border czar, I wrote these numbers down since I’ve been border czar…New York state has denied 14,000 detainers, over 14,000 detainers. Who are they? 6,800 illegal aliens with assault convictions, 800 convictions for child crimes. Don’t tell me you’re trying to protect children! You’re releasing predators to the street everyday across the state. You’ve got 770 convictions for rape and other sex crimes.”
Read that again slowly. New York state officials stood in front of cameras and said they were spending millions to protect children. The same state has turned away over 14,000 federal detainer requests, including 800 people convicted of crimes against children. That is not a contradiction. That is a policy.
The Laws Behind the Standoff
Hochul signed the “Local Cops, Local Crimes Act” in May that bans state and local law enforcement agencies from helping the federal government in civil immigration enforcement cases and bans ICE agents from wearing masks during operations.
The legislation prohibits local jails from holding individuals on behalf of ICE and bans formal agreements between local governments and ICE, known as 287(g) agreements. The measures also prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks and protect sensitive locations, including hospitals, childcare centers, schools, polling places, and churches, from ICE enforcement activity without a judicial warrant.
In June, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against New York state challenging the constitutionality of the new law, which lawyers for the DOJ said would make ICE agents and other federal authorities subject “to criminal penalties” for wearing masks to protect their identities.
A federal judge recently split the difference. US District Judge Mae D’Agostino issued a preliminary injunction saying state officials can’t prohibit law enforcement officers, including immigration agents, from wearing masks while on duty. But D’Agostino’s preliminary ruling let stand a new state prohibition on 287(g) cooperation agreements between local police departments and ICE.
Hochul and James recently wrote to nearly a dozen sheriffs in Broome, Madison, Nassau, Rensselaer, and other counties, ordering them to terminate their 287(g) agreements. Several sheriffs have said they won’t comply with the demands while the court challenge is still playing out.
And Hochul’s office keeps insisting this is about community safety. “As we have said from the start, New York’s ban on 287(g) agreements is legal and will keep our communities safe,” Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James said in a joint statement. “Local law enforcement should be focused on local matters, and New York taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for any collaboration with ICE.”
What she did not address is who gets released when local jails refuse to honor federal detainers. Homan answered that part himself.
Mamdani, the DSA, and What New York Is Actually Defending
Mamdani has been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America since 2017. On a recent New York Times podcast, he said “my party is the Democratic Party, and my organization is DSA.” His allies include DSA co-chair Megan Romer, who confirmed the organization’s priorities: abolish the Senate, abolish ICE, abolish prisons, and ultimately do away with American democracy as we know it.
That is the person running New York City. Not a liberal who disagrees with Trump on the margins. A card-carrying member of an openly Marxist organization whose national leadership wants to abolish the body that passes the laws Mamdani is now using to obstruct federal immigration enforcement.
Mamdani has called ICE a “rogue agency.” “We have to stand up and fight back,” Mamdani told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We saw ICE agents arrest a migrant at Federal Plaza, and then we saw NYPD officers arresting a pastor who was peacefully observing that arrest. Those days are going to come to an end when I’m the mayor.”
But Homan’s numbers suggest those days have already shaped New York’s streets in ways Mamdani is not answering for. Homan argued that state officials were ignoring public safety risks, alleging that local non-cooperation policies keep individuals with criminal records from being handed over to federal authorities. According to Homan, New York officials have turned down thousands of ICE detainer requests involving individuals previously convicted of violent crimes, sexual offenses, and assault.
There is also the broader child-tracking failure that preceded all of this. According to DHS, the Office of Refugee Resettlement was referred an average of more than 300 unaccompanied children per day for four years during the Biden administration. DHS officials report that nearly 146,000 of those children have been located since President Trump took office, but almost 300,000 minors smuggled across the border remain unaccounted for. In some cases, minors were found to be in the custody of criminal sponsors now facing federal charges. Some of those sponsors were found to be part of labor or sex trafficking rings.
And yet Hochul’s team wants New York taxpayers to fund legal defense for children in removal proceedings while simultaneously blocking the federal agents who found those 146,000 kids from doing their jobs in her state.
Homan has promised a surge. He told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that when ICE agents surge in New York, “It’s gonna be a controlled operation…it’s gonna be a targeted enforcement operation. Every day we leave the office, and we know exactly who we’re looking for, more likely where we will find them, because we have a targeted operation.”
But New York’s new laws make that targeted operation harder, not easier. When local jails cooperate with federal detainers, holding illegal immigrants flagged by ICE until agents can pick them up, arrests happen in controlled settings. When sanctuary laws forbid that cooperation, ICE has to find the same people on the street, in neighborhoods, at their homes. It takes more agents, more time, and more public disruption.
Hochul wants to call that ICE “overreach.” Homan’s position is simpler: New York chose this. Every detainer it denied, every 287(g) agreement it terminated, every restriction it layered onto federal agents is a choice with consequences. And the people living with those consequences are not the ones holding press conferences about migrant children.
The numbers Homan read on air are not talking points. They are a ledger. Six thousand eight hundred assault convictions. Eight hundred crimes against children. Seven hundred seventy rapes and sex crimes. All of them denied to federal authorities. All of them walking free somewhere in New York state right now because its governor signed a law and called it protection.
That is what “I’m sick of the lying” sounds like when it has something to back it up.
Sources: Mediaite, Tampa Free Press, The Daily Bo Snerdley, CNBC, CBS News New York, Washington Examiner, Gothamist, Spectrum Local News, The Center Square, WLT Report, Denver Gazette, NewsNation, DHS, Britannica, ABC News, Deseret News
