Former acting ICE director Tom Homan said Thursday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was "not very smart," referencing her latest criticism of President Biden, who is reportedly considering executive action to restrict asylum claims at the southern border.
Hom told Fox News' "America Reports" on Thursday that people should look out for what the far-left lawmaker was leaving out of her rhetoric.
"Here's what AOC is not saying, because she's not very smart, here's what she's not saying. Based on immigration court data over the last 10 years, nine out of 10 people who claim asylum at the southern border will get an order removal because they don't qualify for asylum," Homan said.
He said only 6% leave the U.S. after receiving a removal order.
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"She needs to be honest, this isn't about true asylum. This is about getting to the United States, this is about being released, this is about failing to leave the country as order by the courts. They'll hide out and be a fugitive for a few years waiting for the next amnesty, waiting for the next DACA. All these families coming across now, that's your next DACA," he continued.
He said it was "asylum fraud," adding there were real people in this world that were escaping fear and persecution in their home governments.
Ocasio-Cortez accused Biden of doing "impressions" of former President Trump in considering executive action to stop restrict asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Seeking asylum is a legal right of all people. In the face of authoritarian threats, we should not buckle on our principles - we should commit to them. The mere suggestion is outrageous and the President should refuse to sign it," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media.
7.2M ILLEGALS ENTERED THE US UNDER BIDEN ADMIN, AN AMOUNT GREATER THAN POPULATION OF 36 STATES
A White House spokesperson did not directly address Ocasio-Cortez' criticism, but they reiterated calls for House Republicans to act on the Senate’s bipartisan border security and foreign aid bill, which did not even pass the Senate after a flood of GOP opposition.
"The administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system," the spokesperson said.
Nearly 7.3 million migrants have illegally crossed the southwest border under President Biden's watch, a number greater than the population of 36 individual states, a recent Fox News analysis found.
That figure comes from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has already reported 961,537 border encounters in the current fiscal year, which runs from October through September. If the current pace of illegal immigration does not slow down, fiscal year 2024 will break last year's record of 2,475,669 southwest border encounters — a number that by itself exceeds the population of New Mexico, a border state.
Fox News' Elizabeth Elkind and Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.
