Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan on Wednesday criticized Democrats and the news media for not forcefully condemning “left-wing extremists.”
Homan, in an op-ed in Fox News, also condemned attacks on President Trump’s rhetoric in the aftermath of the shooting in El Paso, Texas, saying Trump was “simply doing his job by securing our border and enforcing existing laws.”
“It’s particularly disturbing that many of the same Democratic politicians, news organizations and other groups that justifiably condemned the El Paso shooter for his hate-filled diatribe against Hispanic people and his murderous rampage have failed to condemn the hate-filled diatribes and violence generated by extremist on the left. There should not be a double standard,” Homan wrote.
“But where is the outrage from the nearly two dozen Democrats seeking their party’s presidential nomination regarding the attacks noted above coming from left-wing extremists? Where is the outrage by the media and by the Democratic leadership in Congress?” he added.
Homan cited as an example a man who was shot and killed last month by police after throwing incendiary devices at an immigrant detention center in Tacoma, Wash.
Some media reports later identified the attacker as a member of the anti-fascist movement, also known as “antifa.”
Homan added that if the Tacoma attacker had succeeded in storming the ICE installation, “he could gave killed as many as several hundred people — ICE employees and hundreds of immigrants being detained for hearings.”
Homan also condemned Democrats and the news media for their portrayals of President Trump.
“The same anti-Trump media and Democratic politicians who seek to portray our current president as a racist who hates immigrants seldom mention that President Barack Obama deported a lot more illegal immigrants,” he wrote.
In addition, Homan criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for describing detention centers for immigrants as “concentration camps.”