Among the members of the Democratic Party, few can be said to be more active and energetic in trying to mitigate the real human harms brought about by a second Trump presidency than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Keeping people informed about their constitutional rights and lawful protections is one way to put up a defense against an administration that cares peanuts about the legal principles of due process.
“Know Your Rights in Case of ICE” is AOC’s initiative – which included, among other aspects, a webinar – to assist undocumented migrants in becoming aware of the actions they can take under the law – protected by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments – to shield themselves from forcible deportation.
Naturally, who feels most antagonized by the Democrat’s proactively empathetic show of leadership? The Trump administration. However, someone was particularly – and peculiarly, to put it nicely – vocal about how much he hates the very-much-legal compassion AOC displays with her “Know Your Rights in Case of ICE” strategy. None other than the self-entitled Border Czar Tom Homan, Trump’s second-time director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Constitutional facts don’t care about your anti-migrant feelings
This is why you fight these cowards.
The moment you stand up to them, they crumble.
Homan has nothing. The Fourth Amendment is clear and I am well within my duties to educate people of their rights.
He can threaten me with jail & call names all he wants. He’s got nothing else. https://t.co/XzUfeP634P
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 18, 2025
Upon learning Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hosted her webinar to inform migrants of their rights, members of Donald Trump’s political clique lost their minds, but no one decided to go on a media appearance spree to rant about it quite like Tom Homan.
“She’s the dumbest congresswoman in the history of Congress,” stammered the Border Czar while talking with Newsmax, speaking with all the grace, eloquence, and scrupulousness one has come to expect from Trump and his ring-kissing loyalists. This is a wild statement to utter on national TV, especially considering there’s one Georgia Representative who also goes by her name’s three initials who, well, exists.
But more mind-boggling than his playground insults – something which, at this point, must be water on a duck’s back for Ocasio-Cortez – was his insistence on “where’s that line of impediment.” He himself makes clear he has no idea where the line is drawn, so much so that he professed to be checking in with the DOJ to see whether he could get AOC in legal trouble – he really does hold a grudge dating back to that 2019 House Oversight Committee hearing, doesn’t he?
In response to the sexagenarian’s senseless remarks, the 35-year-old Democrat made a statement, whose poignant articulateness reminds me of Virginia Woolf, not in literary prowess, but in her posture of “unfaltering poise” and unfailingly outspoken adherence to her values when making her voice heard as a woman in a still largely male-dominated career.
read @AOC’s response to homan’s newest statement: https://t.co/bEeJ4CbFQD pic.twitter.com/gLv6V40viC
— mike casca (@cascamike) February 14, 2025
In a rare moment of dissidence and judiciousness coming from a staunch Trump ally – at least until they decided to elaborate in a response to his own tweet – legal scholar Jonathan Turley, the same man who thought President Bill Clinton ought to have been impeached whereas Trump digging for dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine was A-OK, had this to say about Homan’s threats:
…While AOC has never been a defender of free speech, principle demands something more from the rest of us who value the First Amendment. Just as VP Vance offered a powerful defense of free speech in Europe, this baseless threat undermines the high ground achieved in Munich.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 17, 2025
“Powerful” sure is a word to describe Vance’s Munich speech. One could also adjectivize an atomic-level fart as “powerful.”
Back to the issue at hand: unlike whatpeople like Homan keep reiterating again and again, being “illegally” in the U.S. does not constitute anything close to a felony. Rather, it’s a civil violation that would never exempt people from being protected by constitutionally-guaranteed due process, such as the right to a fair and impartial hearing. Illegal entry is but a misdemeanor. Only in the event of an unlawful re-entry after deportation would the charge upgrade to a felony with a punishment of up to two decades in prison.
In Trumpland, the New York City mayor‘s bribery charges can be lifted in an alleged quid pro quo that aims at facilitating ICE raids, while legal prosecution is considered against an elected member of Congress who is informing people that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are not – for your information, Homan – to be nullified or ignored at one’s pleasure and whim.
