Incoming border czar Tom Homan told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that he “had a falling-out” with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the handling of transgender illegal immigrants in detention.
Homan signed a memo in June 2015 providing guidance on how to care for transgender detainees when he was executive associate director of Enforcement and Removal Operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under former President Barack Obama and Mayorkas, who, at the time, was the DHS deputy secretary. Homan, on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” said Mayorkas “ordered” him to sign the memo, prompting “a huge argument” between them.
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“The main thing we disagreed on is the transgender policy, where he wanted the special treatment for transgenders in ICE detention,” Homan said. “I was ordered to sign that policy.”
Carlson asked Homan about the nature of the “special treatment.”
“Making sure they’re identified as being a transgender, they’re protected in our facilities and, you know, separated and get medical attention, whether it’s hormone therapy or whatever it was,” Homan said.
When Carlson inquired if Mayorkas “wanted the U.S. government to pay for hormone therapy,” Homan confirmed.
The 2015 memo required ICE to provide transgender detainees access to medical care, including hormone therapy “based on medical need.”
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“We got in a huge argument over that. And I was ordered to sign the memo, and that’s where kind of we had a falling-out,” Homan said.
He also told Carlson that he would “be surprised how many” transgender illegal immigrants end up in ICE detention, adding “they want a certain protection from our facilities.”
President-elect Donald Trump, on Nov. 10, selected Homan to be his border czar in his second term. The president-elect pledged during his campaign to continue building the U.S.-Mexico border wall, reinstate the Remain in Mexico program, hire more border patrol agents and conduct the “largest deportation program in American history.”
DHS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.