Deroy Murdock: Obama Once Gave Trump’s New Border Czar an Award for Mass Deportation of Illegal Aliens

In a commentary published by The Daily Signal, Project 21 Ambassador Deroy Murdock notes that President Obama once sang the praises of President Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan, whom leftists now vilify.

Deroy also has some choice words for those who defend illegal immigration:

Lesson: To avoid family separation, come to America legally. If you invade—as Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have let 8.4 million illegal immigrants do—you instantly violate 8 U.S. Code § 1325: “Improper entry by alien.” Henceforth, you are a lawbreaker, and America owes you less than nothing.

The argument that illegal immigrants “just want better lives” is vacuous, hollow, and infinitely meaningless. Who doesn’t want a better life?

I want a better life. So, may I barge into Elon Musk’s mansion and drain his wine cellar?

Read Deroy’s commentary in full below.

The gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair have begun.

Trump-haters in newsrooms are sounding the alarm about the anticipated separation of families under “Operation Aurora,” the mass-deportation of illegal aliens that President-elect Donald Trump promises and which 58% of Americans support, according to an Oct. 16 Marquette University survey.

“If Trump gets his way, his deportation program threatens to rip families apart,” Nicole Narea warns in a Nov. 8 Vox column. A Denver Post editorial went so far as to compare Trump’s plan to FDR’s effort “to round up foreign-born Japanese Americans during World War II” and called it “a clear nod to the white supremacists backing his campaign.”

Here is my free advice to foreign citizens who want both the American dream and family cohesion: Enter legally.

My sainted parents wed in 1960. Two years later, they arrived with U.S. visas in their Costa Rican passports. I hatched in Los Angeles in 1963, and my sisters followed in 1965 and 1967. So far, no one has threatened to send us anywhere.

My mother’s parents, sister, and younger brother arrived in 1965. They all landed legally. My grandparents—Aguelo and Aguela, as we called them—are gone, but my aunt and uncle are in L.A.—alive, well, and grandparents in their own right.

Lesson: To avoid family separation, come to America legally. If you invade—as Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have let 8.4 million illegal immigrants do—you instantly violate 8 U.S. Code § 1325: “Improper entry by alien.” Henceforth, you are a lawbreaker, and America owes you less than nothing.

The argument that illegal immigrants “just want better lives” is vacuous, hollow, and infinitely meaningless. Who doesn’t want a better life?

I want a better life. So, may I barge into Elon Musk’s mansion and drain his wine cellar?

Even with his $303 billion checking account, Musk must long for something that would afford him a better life. Regardless, that grants him no license to breach the French-Monaco frontier and occupy a 345-foot yacht or $79 million, sun-splashed palace.

Illegal alien supporters now focus their rage on the incoming border czar. “Tom Homan is skilled at using public safety rhetoric to justify vicious tactics that tear families apart,” Heidi Altman, director of the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement to Fox5.

Arash Azizzada, co-director of a group called Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, told Al Jazeera that Homan’s appointment confirms Trump’s dedication to keeping his “most cruel and racist policy promises.”

Such hyperbolic twits should dismount their unicorns and fill hard chairs before absorbing this news:

Homan received a Presidential Rank Award for serving Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He scored that honor in January 2016—from Barack Obama, one of six Democrat and Republican presidents whom Homan served between 1984 and 2018. (In July 2016, by the way, The Associated Press reported that Obama had deported “more than 2.4 million people, nearly as many as his two predecessors combined.”)

That’s right. Obama saluted Homan’s performance as executive associate director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. According to ICE’s press release trumpeting Homan’s trophy, this distinction—“the nation’s highest civil service award”—is “bestowed to leaders who’ve achieved sustained extraordinary results” for “consistently demonstrating strength, integrity, and commitment to public service.”

ICE described Homan’s “extensive accomplishments” as “impressive and wide-reaching in scope.”

• In fiscal year 2013, Homan deployed a “federal biometric information sharing capability that resulted in the removal of more than 325,000 criminal aliens.”
• “In FY 2014, ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] removed nearly 316,000 individuals from the United States,” according to ICE. “Nearly 56%, or 177,960 of those removed, were convicted criminal aliens. … The amount of criminal aliens removed from U.S. communities in FY 2014 would fill the Dallas Cowboys’ Stadium to capacity more than two times over.” (Note the liberal use of the proper legal term “aliens” rather than today’s gratingly woke euphemism: “migrants.”)
• “In the three years that ICE’s Executive Associate Director Homan has been at the helm, ERO has removed more than 920,000 aliens from the United States. In that same time frame, ERO arrested and removed 534,000 criminal aliens. These accomplishments have a direct impact on national security and public safety.”
• “Homan successfully led expedited efforts to expand family detention capacity from 96 to more than 3,000 beds, an increase of more than 3,000%.” (In short: Tom Homan, thank you for locking up illegal aliens.)
• “And finally,” ICE concluded, “a record 98% of FY 2015 removals met one or more of the civil immigration enforcement priorities, which constitutes a near perfect execution of the stated mission.”

Democrats who foam at the mouth at this news should relax, wipe their frothy chins, and read this:

Deroy Murdock, a member of the Project 21 black leadership network, is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research. This first appeared at The Daily Signal.