Federal immigration enforcement must remain focused on removing violent criminals from the country and avoid aggressive tactics that fuel public backlash, according to Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas.
"The number one issue the president won the election on" is immigration, McCaul told Sunday's "Face the Nation" on CBS.
"What I worry about is turning a winning issue into a liability. I still believe the American people want us to remove dangerous, violent criminals from the streets, but they don't want to see these images of children and people being dragged out of their cars and U.S. citizens.
"Those excessive use-of-forces cases need to stop. And I think Tom Homan will de-escalate the situation, as I've been calling for for weeks."
President Donald Trump has sent in Homan, his border czar, to work with local and state officials where Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting Customs and Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino were unable.
"The American people support the deportation of criminal aliens, violent offenders," McCaul told host Margaret Brennan.
"What they don't support is excessive use of force, and I believe Bovino crossed the line. I think the president was correct in telling him to get out of there."
McCaul said Bovino escalated tensions by deploying roving patrols, worsening relations between the public and law enforcement.
"Bovino went in there with these roving patrols," McCaul continued. "He escalated the situation. He escalated the tension between the public and law enforcement.
"He put his agents in a position they should never have been put in. They have no training for crowd control. Their job is to go in and remove criminal aliens, violent felons from the United States, and get them out of here.
"And so, you know, Tom Homan is a consummate professional. He's been doing this for a long time. I've known him for a long time. He's going to go back to the core mission of ICE, and that's targeted law enforcement operations, not roving the streets causing chaos."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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