Border Czar Tom Homan flipped the script on a CBS News interview Friday, pressing a network correspondent for figures on deaths in ICE custody during the Biden administration after being questioned about fatalities under President Trump. According to The Gateway Pundit, the exchange left CBS immigration correspondent Camilo Montoya-Galvez searching for an answer he did not have.
The interview, focused on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies and ICE detention practices, turned on a single question after Montoya-Galvez cited official ICE data showing 57 people have died in agency custody so far under the current administration. He noted one additional death was reported Friday and argued that, at the current pace, 2026 could set a record for detainee deaths. The correspondent acknowledged that a larger detained population is a partial explanation, but suggested it could not be the whole story.
The Question That Stopped the Interview
Homan responded by asking how many people died in ICE custody during the Biden administration. When Montoya-Galvez did not answer immediately, Homan repeated the question. The correspondent initially pivoted back to his own line of questioning, saying 2026 was on pace to be the highest year on record if current trends continued. Homan pressed again: how many died in custody under Biden?
Montoya-Galvez eventually said he did not have the data on hand. “Of course you don’t,” Homan replied, describing the line of questioning as “another loaded question against the Trump Administration.”
The exchange, which circulated widely online after being flagged by conservative commentators, put a spotlight on how the two administrations’ detention records are compared in press coverage. Homan accused the network of applying a different standard to the current administration than it did to its predecessor.
Homan Defends ICE Detention Standards
Homan used the moment to argue that ICE maintains higher detention standards than any state or federal institution, and that deaths in custody are among the lowest of any state prison system or the federal Bureau of Prisons. He attributed the rising number of deaths in absolute terms to a detention population that has roughly doubled, putting the figure at around 74,000 people in custody at one point.
He also pointed to the medical care ICE provides, saying detainees from third-world countries often see an ICE doctor as their first physician in years. Homan said the agency spent close to a billion dollars on medical care during his previous tenure as ICE director, and argued that those efforts save lives when serious conditions are caught during detention.
Deaths in immigration detention are a longstanding point of contention, and the raw numbers can shift depending on the length of an administration and the size of the detained population. The current administration has detained far more people than its predecessor, a factor Montoya-Galvez himself raised before Homan’s counter-question.
What the interview did not produce was a direct comparison between the two administrations from the network’s own correspondent, who said he did not have the Biden-era figures available. Homan’s question — and the pause that followed it — became the moment the segment is likely to be remembered for.
Source: www.thegatewaypundit.com — https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/10/watch-tom-homan-flips-tables-cbs-hack-humiliates/