Border czar Tom Homan blasted New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after the state and city announced new measures aimed at limiting the scope of federal immigration enforcement.
Appearing on Fox News’ Hannity, Homan responded to state and local initiatives that include a $7 million legal defense fund for unaccompanied migrant children, alongside refreshed limits on how local police departments interact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
During the broadcast, Homan challenged assertions that the federal government was neglecting young migrants, stating that the department had reorganized its vendor contracts to provide legal assistance.
“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,” Homan said during the interview. “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.”
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.
“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,” Homan said. He added that under his tenure, “New York state has denied 14,000 detainers, over 14,000 detainers,” alleging the group included thousands of individuals with prior convictions.
Homan also pointed to administration statistics regarding minors who entered the country during the prior administration, asserting that federal agencies under President Donald Trump have located 151,000 children who were previously untracked.
“President Trump has done more to make New York City and New York State safer than they have,” Homan said. “Where were they when half a million children were separated from their families, put in the hands of criminal cartels, and smuggled across the border? Some of those children died. They lost track of 300,000 of them. It was the Trump administration that found 151,000 of these children that the Biden administration wasn’t even looking for.”
The claim that 300,000 migrant children were “lost” or went missing under the previous administration has drawn pushback from immigration policy experts. Analysts and legal scholars note that the figure broadly includes minors who missed scheduled court hearings or whose case tracking stalled due to federal processing delays, administrative backlogs, and communication gaps between federal agencies and family sponsors, rather than cases where minors disappeared.
Homan maintained that stricter border security measures and federal operations have curbed human trafficking and improved safety metrics nationally and locally.
“I don’t want to hear you talk about us abandoning children. It’s you,” Homan said. “Your communities are less safe because of all these criminals you’re releasing into the street every day. Children are less safe. President Trump is saving thousands of lives every month because we have a secure border.”
Neither Governor Hochul’s office nor Mayor Mamdani’s office immediately issued a formal response to Homan’s comments on the broadcast.
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