Trump border chief threatens jail for Denver mayor amid deportation dispute

Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline incoming border czar, has threatened to put the mayor of Denver in jail after the latter said he was willing to risk incarceration to resist the president-elect’s migrant mass deportation plan.

The threat was issued against Mike Johnston, a Democrat, who said he was not afraid of being jailed and encouraged people to protest against mass round-ups of immigrants in their cities and communities.

Johnston’s remarks came after Trump focused during the presidential election campaign on the Denver suburb of Aurora, which he said had become “a war zone” where apartment buildings had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members.

Asked to respond by Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Homan said: “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing; he’s willing to go to jail. I’m willing to put him in jail.”

Johnston had originally been asked by a local Denver television station to respond to Homan’s previous vows to arrest local leaders and politicians who stood in the way of deportation efforts.

He said he was not willing to go to jail, though he is “not afraid of that” in a Friday interview with 9 News.

“I think the goal is we want to be able to negotiate with reasonable people how to solve hard problems,” he told the outlet.

He said previously, in a separate interview, that he would send Denver police to the city line to confront federal agents – an action he likened to Tiananmen Square. He later withdrew the comments.

Speaking to Hannity, Homan insisted that he was willing to put Johnston “in jail because there’s a statute”.

“What it says is that it’s a felony if you knowingly harbour and conceal an illegal alien from immigration authorities. It’s also a felony to impede a federal law enforcement officer. So if he don’t help, that’s fine. He can get the hell out of the way, but we’re going to go do the job,” he said, before adding: “I find it hard to believe that any mayor or governor would say they don’t want public safety threats removed from their neighbourhoods.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on in Denver, but we’re going to go in and we’re going to go and we’re going to fix it. If you don’t want to fix it, if you don’t want to protect his communities, President Trump and Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] will.”

Homan, who was deputy director of Ice in Trump’s first administration, said the president-elect had a “mandate from the American people … to save American lives”.

He has taken a similarly unbending stance against other local and state Democratic politicians who have declared their local fiefdoms “sanctuary cities” safe from Trump’s deportation plans.

Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, have both vowed opposition. Pritzker recently told journalists: “If you come for my people, you come through me.”

In a separate Fox News interview at the weekend, Homan said the incoming administration would respond to blocking tactics by withholding federal funding from non-compliant cities and states.

“That’s going to happen, I guarantee you,” he told the network’s Mark Levin.