Border czar Tom Homan said Monday evening on Fox News that violence on the U.S. southern border could escalate due to cartel pushback as the Trump administration continues to secure the border.
In the first week of his presidency, Donald Trump moved to shut down the U.S. southern border and carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants, reversing former President Joe Biden’s policies and allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrest “criminal aliens,” including rapists and murderers. On “Hannity,” host Sean Hannity asked the border czar about the safety of agents and cited a recent report of a cartel shootout with the Border Patrol.
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“They’ve taken gunfire, and it’s going to get worse, Sean, because President Trump’s going to seal that border. He’s going to put the cartels out of business. He declared them a terrorist organization,” Homan said. “We got the whole government is going to dismantle these people and wipe them off the face of the earth. They’re not going to go lightly.”
“We’re taking them out of the trafficking business. We’re taking them out of the smuggling business, and we’re taking them out of the dope business. There’s going to be more violence on the southwest border.”
NewsNation’s Ali Bradley reported Monday afternoon that sources from the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Border Patrol agents near Fronton, Texas, were fired at by “suspected cartel members on the Mexico side” and returned fire, with allegations that the cartel members had been “attempting to push a group across the river.” The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) confirmed to Fox San Antonio that the agents were fired at from the Mexican side of the border, though no Border Patrol agents were injured in the incident.
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“That’s why the entire United States government is going to take care of those people and abolish them. We’re going to attack them, not just in Mexico, but in the 42 countries that the Jalisco cartel is currently residing in,” Homan said. “The Trump administration’s going to take them on just like he did the caliphate, and we’re going to destroy them.”
The incident occurred near Fronton Island, which has had a slew of issues with cartel members as it sits near the Rio Grande. In September 2024, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that DPS and the Texas National Guard were working to stop the “smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people” through Operation Lone Star.
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In a handful of executive orders addressing the border and immigration, Trump signed an executive order last week declaring a national emergency at the border and designating the cartels as terrorist organizations.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.