Trump Border Czar Seems Totally Fine With Detaining Citizens

Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, seems unfazed by recent viral examples of federal agents targeting American citizens.

Over the past week, at least two videos circulated widely online and in the media showing immigration agents detaining or pursuing women as they cried out that they were U.S. citizens.

In Louisiana on Thursday, a 23-year-old mother was chased by agents while walking home from a corner store. She repeatedly told them, “I’m a U.S.-born citizen. I was born and raised here. This is my home. My baby’s waiting for me.”

And in Florida on Wednesday, a health care worker was detained during a traffic stop on her way to work. Despite intending to comply, she was threatened and forcibly removed from her car, she said. Footage captured by a Miami Herald reporter shows her being detained, yelling: “I’m a U.S. citizen. Please help me! This is unfair. Why are you doing this to me?”

On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, host Dana Bash confronted Homan with these two incidents.

“I can’t tell you how many times an illegal alien claims to be a U.S. citizen,” the border czar said, appearing comfortable with agents inflicting traumatic experiences on citizens as collateral damage in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Homan went on to confess that he does not think “there’s been zero U.S. citizens that have been detained for questioning because reasonable suspicion said they may be in the country illegally.” However, he claimed, “as soon as that questioning’s over, if they’re a U.S. citizen, they’d be released.”

A recent ProPublica investigation identified more than 170 U.S. citizens who were detained by federal immigration agents. About 24 of them were reportedly held for more than a day, unable to call lawyers or their friends and family.

President Donald Trump woke up Sunday morning full of anger and regret, it seems.

In a morning post on Truth Social, the president ranted against a man he had recently pardoned—Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas—for not having the common decency to switch parties after Trump did him a favor.

Cuellar, a moderate Democrat, and his wife, Imelda, were charged in 2024 with accepting bribes from foreign entities. Trump, out of the kindness of his heart, as he narrated it, saw fit to pardon them. Then, however, things took a turn.

“Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced that he will be ‘running’ for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas (a State where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded!), as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same Radical Left Scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in Prison—And probably still do!” the president wrote.

He apparently was not expecting this.

“Such a lack of LOYALTY,” Trump went on, lamenting his decision. “Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”

The implication of all of this is clear, people took to social media to point out: that Trump was hoping, with his presidential power, to procure another House seat for Republicans. That his bid failed has made him extremely angry. And that he doesn’t mind that the world knows it.

President Donald Trump on Saturday put a lofty spin on his White House renovations—namely, claiming that, by renovating a bathroom in the White House, he is “saving the heritage of this country.”

During his speech at the Kennedy Center Honors Dinner, Trump dwelled for a while on what, evidently, matters to him more than most else: his mission to force his dictator chic design taste upon the People’s House.

Trump specifically mentioned his renovation to the bathroom of the Lincoln Suite, in the southeast corner of the White House’s second floor. In October, Trump announced that he had refurbished the bathroom with white-and-black-marble.

Prior to his intervention, Trump said on Saturday, “It was the worst job. It was done in—many years ago. It was done during, actually, the Truman administration, with very cheap, green tile. That wasn’t Lincoln.”

Now the bathroom is “beautiful,” he mused, done in Paradiso marble.

The president acknowledged criticisms he received for the vanity project. “People said, ‘Oh, why is he wasting time?’”

He continued, “That’s not wasting time, that’s saving our heritage. You know, many, many things like that, it’s saving the heritage of this country,” to which the audience applauded.

In reality, Trump’s renovations seem more poised to defile than to preserve history (hence the widespread opposition among preservationist groups—not to mention the public—to the administration demolishing the East Wing to accommodate his gargantuan planned ballroom).

The grandiosity with which Trump described his Lincoln Bathroom renovation this weekend is consistent with his description of the renovation when it was first unveiled, at which time he said the new marble is “very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln.” Historians and designers dismissed the claim.

Edward Lengel, former chief historian of the White House Historical Association, told The New York Times, “It doesn’t look anything like 1860s interiors to me.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to great lengths Saturday to avoid saying whether the military will release the full, unedited video of its controversial September 2 double-tap strikes on a boat it claims was carrying drugs in the Caribbean.

Thus far, only footage of the first strike has been released to the public. The full unreleased video, however, reportedly goes on to show two survivors clinging to the wreckage, before they were killed by a second strike that legal experts have described as a war crime or murder.

Democratic lawmakers who viewed the full video of the strikes, which killed 11 people, this week said it was “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service” and that it “confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities.”

When asked Wednesday if his administration would release footage of the second strike, President Donald Trump’s answer was simple: “Whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem.”

His defense secretary was much more evasive.

“When can we see that video? When will you release it?” Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson asked Hegseth at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

Hegseth was noncommittal. “We’re reviewing it, right now, to make sure, sources, methods—I mean, it’s an ongoing operation—TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures]. We’ve got operators out there doing this right now. So, whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible about. So, we’re reviewing that right now.”

Later on, Tomlinson asked whether Hegseth will release the full video at all. Hegseth responded, again, without answering. “We are reviewing it right now,” he said.

“Is that a yes or no?” Tomlinson pressed.

Hegseth strung together the following response: “The most important thing to me are the ongoing operations in the Caribbean with our folks that use bespoke capabilities, techniques, procedures in the process. I’m way more interested in protecting that than anything else, so we’re reviewing a process and we’ll see.”

Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington is calling for the release of Wilmer Toledo-Martinez, an immigrant who she says was mauled last month by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement attack dog in Vancouver, Washington.

According to Murray’s office, Toledo-Martinez is an immigrant with no criminal convictions, who came to the United States at 15 years old. His wife and three children—ages 2, 3, and 7, respectively—are all U.S. citizens.

On November 14, Toledo-Martinez reportedly answered a knock at his door to find a federal immigration agent posing as a construction worker, who claimed to have hit his car.

Toledo-Martinez went outside and was asked his name. When he turned to go inside to retrieve his insurance and ID, another agent is said to have released the dog, which bit him repeatedly, leaving injuries that were later captured in graphic images provided by Murray. His wife and two youngest children reportedly watched as this occurred.

In a video, seemingly taken moments after the attack, Toledo-Martinez is seen on the ground in handcuffs as an agent with a K9 stands over him. Another agent in a neon vest asks Toledo-Martinez his name before moving him into a truck.

On The Don Lemon Show, Toledo-Martinez’s lawyer, Olia Catala, said her client was denied immediate medical care. He was only later taken to a hospital, she said, after he begged them to do so and heard one of the agents say, “I’m not losing my job over this.”

To this day, Toledo-Martinez remains in Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, according to Murray.

“This should shock the conscience of every one of us,” Murray said in a statement Friday. “I do not want to live in an America where federal agents can sic attack dogs on peaceful residents with impunity and face no consequences.”

“I am calling for Wilmer’s immediate release from NWIPC,” the statement continues. “He has no criminal convictions, he poses no threat to the community, and he urgently needs appropriate medical care since ICE is denying him the treatment he requires.”