When the only lives of value are ICE lives.

Border Czar Tom Homan says he “does not want to bury anyone else.” He also wants you to recognize that his ICE and CBP agents are risking their lives every single day to keep you safe. In exchange for that bravery, he is “begging the politicians, the governors, the mayors who constantly attack these men and women, please stop... the men and women of ICE and Border Patrol are patriots. Hard stop.”

To be clear, he is not begging this of republicans. It is apparently only the rhetoric and criticism coming from democrats that pierces ICE and CBP thin skin so deeply. So, let’s take a look at all the burials Homan has had to attend thanks to democrats.

The ICE Memorial page for fallen officers lists seventy-seven names. Most interesting about this list is that it contains forty-eight deaths prior to ICE’s creation in 2003 with one dating back to 1915, a whopping one hundred and ten years ago. Only twenty-nine deaths were ICE agents. Of those twenty-nine, the breakdown of causes is listed as:

• Covid - 15
• Cancer related to 9/11 - 7
• Contracted a disease - 1
• Health of officer/accident - 3
• Shot while in Mexico City - 1
• Heat related - 1

It is not surprising that fifteen ICE officers died from Covid. ICE and CBP ranks are bloated with right-wing conspiracy enthusiasts who did not believe in the dangers of Covid 19. Their opinion came from Trump calling the epidemic a hoax and that it was no worse than the flu. Most immigration officers refused to mask, going so far as to file a federal lawsuit against the Biden Administration for mandating they get vaccinated. The lawsuit claimed officers were denied training, harassed and forced to work in a hostile environment for their belief that Covid was not a big deal. 

It was the immigration enforcement agents (ICE, CBP and Border Patrol) who led this protest against Covid vaccinations that ended up saving millions of lives. Many even advocated along with Trump that the horse dewormer ivermectin was the cure. It was not and still is not a cure for Covid. Yet, at the same time, these agencies demanded hazardous duty pay and on-duty death compensation for all the officers they lost to the disease. The most egregious act was to shut down the entire asylum system and the legal avenues with which to enter the country based on a disease they stated was not a big deal.

The Covid Title 42 shut down used to prevent the spread of the disease only applied to migrants. U.S. citizens, those who already had entry documents and those transporting goods were free to go back and forth as always. There was something about a migrant having Covid that was more dangerous to CBP. And the assumption made every single time an ICE, CBP or Border Patrol agent died of Covid was that it always, ALWAYS, came from an undocumented migrant they encountered while on duty. 

There are two reasons why the immigration enforcement agencies decided to consider any Covid death an on-duty death regardless of where the disease was acquired. The first was that this on-duty designation is required for surviving families to obtain benefits. When a federal law enforcement officer dies in the line of duty and because of that duty, families can receive nearly $450,000 from the Public Officer’s Safety Program. In 2020, Congress passed a law to include Covid 19 deaths and those who became ill and died from the work during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

Arguing how and when these men and women became ill and died is not morally or ethically worth arguing in my opinion. What is worth arguing about is that it was 9/11 toxic contamination and Covid that killed these men and women, and not political rhetoric, democrats demanding accountability, or “governors and mayors attacking these men and women” that caused them to die. 

The seven ICE officers who died from 9/11 exposure did not work for ICE during the time they were exposed. ICE did not exist until March 1, 2003. These seven officers plus the other forty-eight officers listed from 1915 to 1999 are listed to inflate their numbers. They are trying to show the public how dangerous being an immigration enforcement officer is. Of all the ICE officer deaths listed, only one appears to be an in the line of duty death in which the officer was targeted. 

This same statistical manipulation is repeated for the U.S. Border Patrol and CBP. The Cato Institute found that from 2003 to 2023, fifty-eight Border Patrol agents died on duty. Here is the breakdown:

Ten percent, roughly six of the fifty-eight agent deaths from 2003 to 2023 were targeted. The rest were Covid, accidents, health of the agent and car wrecks. When compared to other police agencies, Border Patrol agents are killed a lot less than other law enforcement agencies. According to the Cato study, “about one in 6,553 Border Patrol agents died in the line of duty per year from 2003 through 2023 for an annual rate of about 15.3 per 100,000.” Whereas police officers were killed “one in  3,705 per year” or “about 32.5 deaths per 100,000.” Even with the recent shooting death of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont, Border Patrol remains one of the safest law enforcement jobs. 

But when Cato looked at the causes of police officer deaths, they found that murder, not Covid or 9/11 investigations was the leading cause of death.

So, when Border Czar Tom Homan says he’s tired of burying his immigration enforcement officers, he is playing the victim and scapegoating democrat politicians, governors and mayors. If he really cared about his officers, he would tell them to get vaccinated, to stop driving so recklessly, to get in better shape before chasing people. Democrats and their demands for accountability are not killing ICE, CBP nor Border Patrol officers. Their own stupidity and suicide is what kills most of them.

Americans are tired of burying our loved one too. Homan couldn't care less about the thousands of dead from fentanyl that his agents fail to find, the mass shooters his agents fail to stop or the deaths his precious agents bring to our streets during this mass deportation. When asked about a death of a seventy-five year old man in his ICE custody, Homan responded, “I mean, people die in ICE custody. People die in county jails. People die in state prisons.” 

For Homan, the only lives he values are his officers’ lives.