“I said in March, if the rhetoric doesn’t stop, there is gonna be bloodshed,” said Homan.
The Trump administration’s new head of Operation Metro Surge, “border czar” Tom Homan, suggested on Thursday that anti-ICE protests forced federal agents’ hand in the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, in a chilling statement on free speech.
In remarks at the Bishop Whipple Federal Building, the site of many protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, Homan vowed to continue ICE’s presence in the region “until the problem is gone.” He said, however, that protesters must end their “rhetoric” against the invasion, saying that, the more people protest, the more Department of Homeland Security agents the administration will send in.
“We got to stop the rhetoric, the hateful rhetoric, that has caused an increase in assaults,” he said, referring to the administration’s false claim that DHS agents are facing a 1,000 percent increase in attacks against them. This claim has been thoroughly debunked, including by the fact that the vast majority of cases have represented extremely minor charges or been reduced to no charges at all.
