Border czar Tom Homan has sent a warning from Washington: He’s “coming to Boston” and “bringing hell.”
During a fiery speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C., Homan slammed Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox for becoming “a politician” and the department’s limited cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
“I read a story last night that the police commissioner of Boston, you said you’d double down on not helping law enforcement officers of ICE. I’m coming to Boston, and I’m bringing hell with me,” Homan said during a 15-minute speech that drew loud applause.
Boston has been one of the main cities the Trump administration has focused its immigration conversations around due to its sanctuary status.
Touting how Boston is among the “safest major cities in the country,” Cox told WCVB last Sunday that his department has “pretty defined rules” and must “abide by the law here in the state,” meaning it doesn’t “enforce civil detainers regarding federal immigration law.”
“I looked at the numbers this morning,” Homan said, “I stopped counting at nine child rapists that were in jail in Massachusetts, but rather than honoring an ICE detainer, released them back into the street.”
“You’re not a police commissioner,” he said of Cox. “Take that badge off your chest, put it in the desk drawer because you became a politician, you forgot what it’s like to be a cop.”
“And guess what?” the border czar added. “The men and women of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they found those predators, and they’re locked back up, and we are going to deport them from the United States.”
In one of the first enforcement actions after President Trump retook office last month, ICE arrested at least eight illegal immigrants in Boston and in surrounding cities: a Haitian gang member with at least 17 criminal convictions, multiple MS-13 gang members, and several murder and rape suspects.
There has been a slew of arrests since.
Under a state Supreme Judicial Court ruling in 2017, Massachusetts authorities cannot arrest or hold a person based on a federal civil immigration detainer. Boston has been a sanctuary city since 2014 under its Trust Act.
“From our perspective,” Cox told WCVB last week, “what we tell anyone who comes to visit our city or lives in our city is that we don’t care about your immigration status. What we do care about, is ‘Are you a victim of crime in our city, or are you a victimizer?’ We will hold you accountable for that, no matter what your immigration status is.”
Homan shot back Saturday: “Sanctuary cities, you are a sanctuary for criminals.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi froze funding to “sanctuary jurisdictions” on her first day in charge of the Department of Justice earlier this month.
Mayor Michelle Wu, who bashed the Trump administration on Friday for tossing protections that shielded roughly half a million Haitian migrants from deportation, will testify before a Congressional oversight committee investigating sanctuary city policies on March 5.
The hearing will also include the mayors of Chicago, Denver, and New York City as speakers.
Spokespeople for the mayor and police commissioner did not immediately respond to Herald requests for comment on Saturday.