Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said Monday the media is partly to blame for the anti-ICE riots that caused chaos in downtown Los Angeles over the weekend.
During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Homan slammed the media for not reporting the real reasons that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement were conducting investigations in the Fashion District of L.A. He said the law enforcement agency was executing warrants on specific criminal activity and noted that the news ignored that, choosing to characterize the actions as wide-ranging immigration raids that were "separating families."
"The facts never got out. Even though we put the facts out, the media didn't cover it. They just said 'immigration raids,' and we're separating families and all the negative information we hear all the time," Homan told "Morning Joe" co-host Jonathan Lemire.
FEDERAL OFFICIALS SLAM DEMOCRATS FOR 'DANGEROUS' RHETORIC AS ICE AGENTS FACE VIOLENT MOBS IN LA, NYC
ICE agents carried out operations at businesses across Los Angeles on Friday, which sparked protests and clashes outside multiple locations. The next three days saw unrest and confrontations between anti-ICE rioters and law enforcement, while the Department of Homeland Security urged California state leaders to "call off their rioting mob."
A DHS statement put out Saturday read, "Last night, over 1,000 rioters surrounded a federal law enforcement building and assaulted ICE law enforcement officers, slashed tires, defaced buildings, and taxpayer funded property. It took the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) 2 hours to respond."
In response to the escalating chaos, President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles. The troops began arriving on Sunday morning.
FEDERAL OFFICIALS SLAM DEMOCRATS FOR 'DANGEROUS' RHETORIC AS ICE AGENTS FACE VIOLENT MOBS IN LA, NYC
Homan told Lemire on Monday that the media and liberals ignored the reasons that ICE was in Los Angeles in the first place.
"The Fashion District wasn't an immigration raid. It was the service of three criminal warrants at locations based on a large criminal conspiracy that ICE is investigating, that has to do with money laundering, tax evasion and customs fraud - where a company under-declared over $80 million in goods, failed to pay $17 million in fees," he said.
Homan added, "And it's part of an overall conspiracy on numerous businesses that they believe that some of this money is being laundered in Mexico and Colombia… So, this was a criminal investigation that they are responding to."
ICE agents captured the "worst of the worst" criminal illegal aliens in Los Angeles during operations on Friday, including murderers, sex offenders and other violent criminals, the agency said on Sunday.
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After Homan accused the media of ignoring those details, he doubled down on how necessary the Los Angeles raids were in getting dangerous criminals off the streets.
"We took a lot of bad people off the street last couple of days - a Vietnamese national that attended a graduation party, was kicked out and came back and killed two young people, two young Americans," he said. "We arrested a child predator. We arrested someone for sexual misconduct, someone arrested for convicted of armed robbery. We arrested numerous gang members."
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"What ICE did the last couple of days is make Los Angeles safer by taking public safety threats off the street," Homan added.
