“Let me be clear: Physical description can’t be the sole factor to give you reasonable suspicion,” Tom Homan told CNN on Sunday. “It’s articulable facts, with an ‘s.’ So appearance can be just one. For instance, if someone has an MS-13 tattoo on their face, that may be one factor to add to other factors to raise reasonable suspicion.”
Homan earlier this week told Fox News that ICE and other federal officials, including Border Patrol officers, do not need “probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them.”
“They just need totality of the circumstances, right? They just go through the observation, get our typical facts — based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions,” he told that network.
But on Sunday, Homan underscored that those comments had been “taken out of context” and reiterated that “physical description cannot be the sole reason to detain and question somebody” or give rise to reasonable suspicion.
“It’s a myriad of factors,” he said on CNN. “So every officer, every situation, is different. But I can tell you this: Every ICE officer goes through Fourth Amendment training every six months and reminded what their authorities are for arrest, detention, and questioning. So the officers are very well trained.”
The issue of possible racial profiling has been in the political spotlight this week after a Los Angeles-area federal judge on Friday ordered that the Trump administration stop conducting raids in which federal officers are allegedly arresting possible illegal immigrants without reasonable suspicion and instead detaining them based on their race, accents, and occupation, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, in addition to not providing them with immediate access to lawyers.
On Sunday, Homan added that he “looked forward” to the Justice Department litigating California Central District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s order, expressing confidence that the Trump administration would win on appeal.
In the same interview with CNN, Homan also expressed sadness after a farm worker in California, 57-year-old Jaime Alanis, died on Saturday following a 30-foot fall from a roof during an ICE raid at the cannabis facility where he worked.
MIGRANT DIES AFTER 30-FOOT FALL FROM GREENHOUSE ROOF DURING CALIFORNIA ICE RAID
“It’s sad. It’s unfortunate,” he said. “He wasn’t in ICE custody, and ICE did not have hands on this person. But it’s always unfortunate when there’re deaths. I mean, no one wants to see people die.”
At the same time, Homan defended the ICE officers, contending “they were doing the job” serving criminal arrest warrants as part of an investigation into alleged child trafficking and labor at Glass House Farms facilities in Camarillo and Carpinteria.
