Kristi Noem says the Department of Homeland Security will ensure protesters face the consequences for taking part in clashes with ICE officers on Friday afternoon.
“I believe that we will press charges against everybody who has broken the law last night,” the Homeland Security secretary told Fox News on Saturday.
Her comments come after police arrested dozens of participants in violent protests outside a federal building in downtown Los Angeles, where a number of immigrants were being detained following raids by ICE officials across the city earlier in the day.
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Forty-four people were arrested during Friday’s protest against ICE raids, said Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, a spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations
“We’ll continue to do our ICE operations, we’ll continue to make sure everybody in this country has the law equally applied to them,” Noem further told Fox, adding: “Freedom works when everybody has justice applied equally to them.”
Since President Donald Trump took office for the second time earlier in January, his administration has come under near-constant fire for violating immigrants’ constitutionally mandated right to due process amid the president’s ongoing, nationwide deportation drive.
This has perhaps most notoriously played out in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland dad of one who was deported to his native El Salvador in March for his supposed ties to violent criminal groups—allegations the White House has since wholly failed to substantiate.
The Trump administration has this week facilitated Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States so that he can face federal criminal charges for allegedly conspiring to transport people around the country illegally.
“The guy spends his life trafficking people and children and selling them into slavery,” Noem said of the Maryland dad on Saturday. “He’s back, he’s getting prosecuted, then he’ll be returning back to El Salvador.”
The homeland security secretary further took aim at the Democratic Party for having turned Abrego Garcia—who has never been convicted of a crime, and who has previously testified in court about his efforts to resist gang recruitment in his home country—into a “hero.”
She also lambasted Democrat officials for their ongoing criticism of ICE’s involvement in Trump’s nationwide deportation drive, using their opposition to the violation of immigrant’s rights to further praise the president’s policies.
“What do we do when we have guys like Hakeem Jeffries standing up in front of the world and saying it’s ok to write ‘Kill ICE’, it’s ok to throw things at law enforcement officers? It’s not ok, not in America,” she said.
“This has been going on now by Democrat leaders for years and that’s why Donald Trump is in the White House. He’s the only guy, the only guy who fights for every single American,” she added. “That’s why I’m so proud to work for him, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that these dummies in the Democrat party are still around, and still getting elected.”
