Noem, Homan deny racial profiling in ICE raids, vow to appeal court's block

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan have denied that racial profiling is being used in raids conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, vowing to appeal a federal court's block on the raids.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, a Biden appointee, on Friday granted two temporary restraining orders and instructed the Department of Homeland Security to create guidance for officers to determine “reasonable suspicion” outside an individual's race or ethnicity, the language they speak or their accent, location, or occupation.

Noem said Sunday regarding the "ridiculous" court decision, “We will appeal and we will win,” The Washington Times reported. She added that the ruling mischaracterized the immigration enforcement efforts and claimed the judge was “getting political.”

“We never ran our operations that way,” Noem said. “We always built our operations, our investigations, on case work, on knowing individuals we need to be targeted because they were criminals.”

Homan also said Sunday that the “ruling is wrong.”

Frimpong “is assuming that the officers don’t have reasonable suspicion,” Homan said. “They don’t need probable cause to briefly detain and question someone. They just need reasonable suspicion, and that is based on many articulable facts.”

Homan said that those facts can include a person’s physical appearance, like an MS-13 tattoo, but that cannot be the sole reason.

“So, unless she is in the officer’s mind, I don’t know how she can make that decision that they are not using reasonable suspicion,” he said of the judge. “How does she know that?”

Homan argued that the judge was legislating from the bench.

“I don’t think any federal judge can dictate immigration policy,” he said. “That is a matter for Congress and for the president.”