Trump Border Czar Tom Homan: Tren De Aragua And MS-13 Will Be Top Priorities; "So, January 20, Game On"

Trump's pick for border czar Tom Homan spoke to FNC's Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures" about plans to work with New York City Mayor Eric Adams to make the Big Apple safer and his formula for getting migrant criminals out of communities.

THOMAS HOMAN, INCOMING BORDER CZAR: Yes. But I'm pleased. I will be meeting with him Thursday. And I hope we can partner on making New York City a safer community. President Trump's been clear. We're going to prioritize public safety threats and national security threats. So I'm not surprised that Mayor Adams is coming to the table, because I think his number one responsibility is protection in his communities.

I'm shocked at other mayors and other governors who want to put roadblocks up. I can't believe any elected official does not want to remove public safety threats from their communities. But we're going to do it with them or without them. We're going to get this done.

BARTIROMO: Tom, we just saw this report from The New York Post that said that 58,000 illegal criminals are running around in New York right now and that they have already been convicted of crimes.

Tell me about that group. Is that correct, 58,000 people who are gang members, many of whom belong to this gang Tren de Aragua, who is incredibly dangerous in New York right now, and another hundreds of thousands of them throughout America?

HOMAN: Yes, but the number is low. We only know what we have reports on, we have information on.

Remember, a lot of these sanctuary cities, when they book a foreign national in their jail, many of these sanctuary cities don't even ask them their nationality, in fear that ICE would get their hands on information. So you can guarantee there's at least 58,000 and more.

And as far as Tren de Aragua, they're going to be a major priority of the Trump administration. President Trump has made that promise. And we will be concentrating on them right out of the gate, them, MS-13 and other criminal elements.

BARTIROMO: Tell me how you're going to do this, Tom. What's the plan? Are you expecting to use the military to round up these people? How will you get them out of the country?

HOMAN: Well, first of all, I want to make something clear to exactly what we're going to do for all these sanctuary cities pushing back. San Diego's writing legislation.

You have got Colorado and other states and other cities saying they're going to prevent us from doing what I'm doing. I want to send them a clear message. If you let us in the jail, we can arrest the bad guy in the jail, in the safety and security of the jail. One officer could do that.

But when you release the public safety threat back in the community, you put the community at risk. You put my officers at risk. You put the alien at risk, because here's what's going to happen. You're going to release that guy in the community, I'm going to send an entire team to go look for the guy in your community.

And what's going to happen? We will find that guy. And when we find that guy, there's probably going to be others, others are not a priority. However, if they're in the country illegally, they will be arrested too, because we're not going to tell an immigration officer like the Biden administration did that you're going to turn your back on a known immigration illegal.

When you're an immigration officer, you have an oath to uphold. So you are forcing us into a community at large numbers where other non-priority aliens will be arrested. That's the result, the exact result you don't want.

So let us in the jail. It's safer for everybody and it's the right thing to do to the security communities. What we're going to do, Maria, we're going to target, as I say, public safety threats, national security threats.

We're going to send agents out on day one. We're already working on targeting. DOD, they have helped every administration. We would like DOD to help us in a lot of areas in transportation and infrastructure building, intelligence and targeting. But a sworn immigration officer with immigration authority will be making those arrests.

BARTIROMO: Yes, I mean, you know what's great about the incoming administration is that all of you are on the same page. So you can be grabbing resources, I assume, and conversations from, like you said, defense, intelligence to actually get the job done.

Is that right? Are you coordinating on a whole-of-government officials throughout different agencies to ensure that you can secure the border and send these illegal criminals back?

HOMAN: Absolutely. I have been working very close with Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller was the architect of the first Trump administration with unprecedented success. We're talking about bringing everybody to the game, other law enforcement agencies, DOD.

I had to shut down my LinkedIn account because I got thousands of retired ICE agents, retired Border Patrol agents, retired police officers, retired military that want to come and do this job and make America safe again. There will be no lack of resources.

But as your first segment was talking about, we need the money. We need the money to have more detention beds and more underground transportation and to conduct these operations. So I'm hoping the Hill sees the light and give us the money we need to keep President Trump's promise, the mandate the American people to keep him, and secure this nation, secure the border and remove the illegal aliens from this country, who are not supposed to be here.

Even though we have got a prioritization public safety threats and national security threats, I want to be clear. If you're in the country illegally, you have got a problem, especially if you're fugitive that had due process at great taxpayer expense. You were ordered removed by a federal judge, you went into hiding, no, we're going to be looking for you too.

So this is going to be a huge operation. I'm looking forward to getting it started. I haven't started the operation yet, but I have already worked with the Texas governor on the plans and the Texas border czar. I'm working with Mayor Adams. I met with hundreds of sheriffs the other day. The National Sheriffs Association is ready to go to work with us. So, January 20, game on.