Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, seems very worried after hearing that she could be the subject of a federal investigation for allegedly helping illegal immigrants avoid being caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This week, the controversial Democrat wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking if she was the subject of such an investigation. This was after Tom Homan, the border czar, said he had sent her to the Justice Department to be looked into for possible criminal charges.
“I’m writing to ask if the Department of Justice (DOJ) has given in to political pressure and tried to use the DOJ against elected officials whose speech they don’t agree with,” she said in her letter. “In the past two weeks, ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan has threatened to prosecute me politically on several occasions, citing materials I sent out telling my constituents and the American public about their legal and constitutional rights.
“On February 13, 2025, Mr. Homan told everyone that he had asked the Deputy Attorney General to start an investigation and that I was ‘now in trouble.’ It’s been 14 days since Mr. Homan first said he would use your agency as a weapon, but I still haven’t heard anything from the federal government. The things Homan did go against basic Constitutional rights, and there needs to be more openness,” AOC said, quoting the First Amendment.
“Yes, Vice President Vance did say last week, ‘We may not agree with your views, but we will fight to protect your right to say them in public.’” The fact that Mr. Homan keeps trying to use your organization to threaten legally elected officials is a clear threat to the right to free speech in the United States. “It is a violation of the First Amendment to threaten people with jail time for exercising their rights under the First Amendment,” she said.
“A big part of our job as elected officials is to teach people about their rights, especially now when things are becoming less certain.” No matter what political views you have, a government that uses threats of DOJ investigations to silence free speech is a threat to everyone. Before March 5, 2025, please let me know what the Department of Justice’s response to Mr. Homan’s request is and if my office or I are being investigated for exercising our First Amendment rights and doing our jobs as members of Congress, Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
The representative caused a stir when earlier this month he held an Instagram Live webinar called “Know Your Rights.” Homan thinks that the webinar may have been meant to teach illegal immigrants how to avoid being detained by federal immigration officers.
There were lawyers from the Immigrant Defense Project on the webinar, which was held in both English and Spanish. The lawyers taught illegal immigrants how to respond to actions taken by ICE.
Aside from that, her office has also distributed flyers that tell illegal immigrants about the methods used by ICE and their legal options.
During an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Homan said that he sent Ocasio-Cortez to the deputy attorney general to be looked into.
“She wants to say that she knows how to teach people their constitutional rights.” The border chief said, “Yeah, you can call it that.”
“Everyone knows what she’s doing.” She wants to teach these people how to avoid being caught by police or ICE. We are still looking for child predators in New York and her district. Some of the people she wants to teach about constitutional rights are people who have been convicted of rape or child sex crimes, Homan said.
“We’re trying to follow the laws that Congress made.” It’s possible that they have more important things to do than write laws that they don’t want to be enforced, but as a member of Congress, you’d think she’d want ICE to enforce the laws that she helped write and for which she gave us money. That’s what we’re trying to do, but she’s making it harder and more dangerous, he said.
Hannity said it was likely the representative’s case for free speech, but he asked, “When does it cross the line into helping someone break the law?”
“That’s the exact question I asked the Deputy Attorney General.” He was asked to look into it. “I said, “You know, I’ve seen someone step in front of you and between you and the person you’re pulling over or beating,” Homan said.
