A top TV show seems to have gotten under the skin of a top Trump administration official.
Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Monday that he was not a fan of how a medical drama portrayed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in an episode.
“I’ve been on the Hill negotiating the DHS shutdown. They don’t want to reform ICE, they want to shut it down,” Homan, 64, said, referring to “the left.” “And they talk about ICE making arrests in schools, in churches, and in hospitals. We’ve never made an arrest inside of a hospital. We’ve never made an arrest inside of a church.”
“I watched a TV show last week, some medical show, and it showed ICE agents coming into the emergency room and arresting somebody that was getting ready for surgery,” he continued. “The whole left is misinforming the American people, and that’s why you see the hate, and the rhetoric, because all of these people are lying about what the men and women of ICE and Border Patrol do.”
Homan appears to be talking about hit HBO Max show, The Pitt.
The series’s 11th episode, “5 P.M.,” has ICE officers bring in a detainee, Pranita, who “took a nasty fall” during an immigration raid on a restaurant.
Pranita is fast-tracked for an X-ray, where it’s determined she does not have a fracture, which would require surgery. Instead, she is given a sling, but before she can be provided with one, the ICE agents step in to take her away immediately.
Nurse Jesse attempts to stop them, but is tackled to the floor by the agents and detained.
Series producer John Wells said during an episode of The Town with Matt Belloni that they wanted to be “careful” in their portrayal of ICE on the show.
“We’re not trying to politicize it. We’re simply trying to put forward what sometimes are uncomfortable truths, but are truths nonetheless,” Wells, 69, said. “We’re just trying to be truthful. And if we can be truthful, it’s not left or right, it’s just our telling of what’s factually happening without trying to take a side.”
The Daily Beast reached out to ICE and reps for The Pitt for comment on Homan’s remarks.
Last July, federal immigration officers arrested Denis Guillen-Solis, a landscaper originally from Honduras, after chasing him inside the Ontario Advanced Surgical Center in Ontario, California. Two healthcare workers were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of impeding and assaulting law enforcement officers, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Homan took over for Border Patrol “commander at large” Greg Bovino after the widely unpopular immigration crackdown in Minnesota, called “Operation Metro Surge,” resulted in the shooting deaths of two American citizens at the hands of federal officers: 37-year-old mother Renee Good and 37-year-old VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
