Border czar Tom Homan has been defending the pace of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Homan said roughly 60 percent of current ICE arrests involve individuals with criminal records, with the remaining 40 percent involving non-criminal immigration violations, and argued that enforcement numbers are running well ahead of last year’s pace despite what he described as more than one hundred nationwide injunctions filed against the administration’s immigration policies, along with a substantial number of habeas corpus rulings that he said have forced the release of tens of thousands of detained individuals. Proft also played comments from Homan criticizing New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to bar local sheriffs from renting jail space to ICE, arguing the policy will simply result in detained individuals being transferred out of state rather than genuinely protecting immigrant communities, and comments from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in which Mamdani appeared to invoke international legal obligations regarding asylum seekers without fully clarifying what those obligations entail under current law.
Proft welcomed Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Article III Project, to discuss recent developments in immigration enforcement and the ongoing push for the SAVE Act, federal legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Chamberlain discussed the administration’s recent move to invoke the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a legal mechanism created by statute in the 1990s that has never previously been used, as a potentially faster pathway for removing individuals deemed to pose a terrorism-related threat. He cautioned that because the court has no precedent or established procedural rulings, its practical speed and effectiveness remain uncertain.
Chamberlain also voiced support for equipping ICE agents with body cameras during vehicle stops and enforcement operations, arguing that footage would likely demonstrate that confrontations more often result from individuals resisting lawful detention rather than unprovoked aggression by officers, drawing a comparison to how similar footage affected public perception of law enforcement encounters during the Black Lives Matter movement.
Much of the interview focused on a widely discussed exchange between Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and journalist Jonathan Karl regarding voter identification requirements, during which Warner’s characterization of Virginia’s voter ID laws was challenged as inaccurate, since the state allows voters without photo identification to cast a ballot after signing an affidavit. Chamberlain argued Democratic officials generally struggle to defend opposition to voter ID requirements given how routinely identification is required for other everyday activities, and noted that the debate had drawn comparisons over the weekend to Olive Garden’s barcoded identification system for its unlimited pasta promotion, which several commentators noted involves stricter identity verification than voting in some states.
Asked about prospects for advancing the SAVE Act through the budget reconciliation process, Chamberlain expressed skepticism that the measure could pass before the midterm elections, citing a lack of consistent Republican support in the Senate and doubts that the legislation would satisfy procedural rules limiting reconciliation bills to matters with direct budgetary impact. He said he does not believe Senate Majority Leader John Thune bears primary responsibility for the impasse, arguing that individual senators retain significant independent authority over their own votes and that Thune lacks meaningful leverage over members who are retiring or who have grown frustrated with the administration, making broader intervention difficult regardless of leadership effort.