President Donald J. Trump’s White House Border Czar, Tom Homan, reportedly delivered a forceful indictment of Congressional Democrats on Tuesday evening, accusing them of enabling the criminal operations of Mexico’s drug cartels through years of open-border policies and obstruction of immigration enforcement.
In a detailed television interview, Homan argued that decisions made under the former Biden administration, combined with Democrats’ continued efforts to limit the tools and authority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have directly strengthened the cartels’ power and profitability.
Homan began by outlining what he called a basic, unavoidable truth about illegal immigration. “Bottom line is, if you support illegal immigration, then you support the criminal cartels in Mexico,” he said.
He explained that every individual who crosses the southern border illegally must pay a “plaza fee” to the cartels, meaning the surge of unlawful crossings in recent years has produced a windfall for violent criminal organizations. According to him, no one crosses without cartel permission, and no one gets through the border without putting money in these groups’ pockets.
Homan reminded viewers that this issue is not about abstract policy but about real human suffering and national security failures. He pointed to the past four years, during which more than ten million individuals arrived at the border, overwhelming resources and making border security nearly impossible to sustain.
At the same time, he noted, more than a quarter million Americans died from fentanyl poisoning—fentanyl that, in many cases, was smuggled across the border while federal authorities were hamstrung by permissive policies.
He said that the former Biden administration presided over a border environment that allowed unprecedented numbers of individuals from terror‐sponsoring countries to enter the United States without proper vetting. The situation, in his view, created an unacceptable national security vulnerability. Homan also stressed that sex trafficking surged under these conditions, affecting women and children on a scale the country had never witnessed before. He argued that the absence of serious border enforcement did not merely invite illegal immigration but created the ideal operational environment for smugglers, traffickers, and organized criminal networks.
Turning specifically to the trafficking of minors, Homan said the former administration allowed more than half a million children to be smuggled into the United States. He accused federal authorities of losing track of roughly 300,000 of those minors and said the Biden team “wasn’t even looking for them.” According to him, this constitutes the “biggest national security failure” and “biggest humanitarian failure in the history of this nation.” He insisted that such outcomes are a direct result of Democratic policies that prioritize political narratives over enforcement and public safety.
Addressing the common claim from Congressional Democrats that illegal immigration is a minor offense, Homan rejected the argument outright. “Illegal migration is not a victimless crime,” he said. “And if they don’t know that, they’re just simply ignorant.” He suggested that Democrats have chosen to downplay the severity of illegal immigration because acknowledging its consequences—cartel profit, American deaths, national security threats, and large-scale human trafficking—would force them to confront the failures produced by their own policies.
Throughout the interview, Homan emphasized that border security is not merely a political issue but a moral one, and he urged lawmakers to put aside ideological posturing in favor of defending American sovereignty and protecting vulnerable people who are being exploited by criminal networks.
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