Page A3From§Eachthe milkman edition — 31 August 2026
As it ran on the front
Look, nobody's saying deportation is a spectator sport, and nobody's saying Tom Homan wants it to be one either. When he told reporters, quote, 'get them out quick,' end quote, regarding the removal of Milo Yiannopoulos, that's just efficient federal process. That's - that's just good government, folks, moving cases along instead of letting them sit in some backlog for eighteen months, which, by the way, is a real number, eighteen months, I looked it up, don't quote me on the exact figure. Did I say eighteen months? I don't actually know the average processing time. Moving on.
And when a Democratic senator stood up and said ICE 'terrorizes' children, Director Homan went and took that claim 'head-on,' which is the technical term for holding a press availability and saying, no, we don't do that, we're professionals. And I believe him. I believe the man who, in the same news cycle, described his agency's approach to a deportation case as 'get them out quick.' Those two sentiments coexist fine. They're not related. One is a policy tempo. The other is a rebuttal to a characterization. Two different filing cabinets.…
…(cont) Here's the thing about 'quick' - it doesn't mean anything, is what I'm realizing as I say it out loud. Quick compared to what? Quick like a Band-Aid, quick like you don't want anybody watching too closely, quick like there isn't a lot of process happening in that window? No. No, I don't mean that. I meant quick like the DMV finally calling your number. That's the intended read.
The senator's claim was about children specifically, and the rebuttal was about the agency generally, and I want to be very clear that generally denying something specific is a recognized rhetorical - it's a real thing people do, it's not just something I'm inventing right now under deadline pressure.
Look. The agency has a tempo. The tempo is quick. Whether quick is a good adjective to put next to the word 'kids' is not something I'm prepared to workshop today, but I will say: nobody in that building woke up trying to terrorize a child, they woke up trying to hit a removal number, which, again, not the same thing. Probably. The paperwork doesn't distinguish between quick and gentle, and maybe it should, but that's a design question, not a Tuesday-press-conference question, and I am, God help me, only staffed for the Tuesday press conference.
“'Get them out quick' and 'we don't terrorize kids' aren't in tension if speed is the whole point - the faster it moves, the fewer people get to ask who's in the van. When the denial and the boast come from the same guy in the same week, believe the boast.”
“The Director was addressing two separate questions on two separate days. That they landed in the same news cycle is a scheduling coincidence, not a message - and I'd stand by that even if I hadn't just said it out loud for the first time under deadline.”
The receipts
The UN torture rapporteur found direct-contact electric shock gloves "incompatible with the absolute prohibition of torture" - ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on them ABC10 San Diego / UN Special Rapporteur finding, August 2026
Tom Homan Takes Dem Senator’s Claim That ICE Terrorizes Kids Head-On‘ICE is not in the business of terrorizing children’
Editor's note: This story was updated to accurately reflect former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's title. White House border czar Tom Homan on Sunday said federal immigration enforcement authorities "get them out quick" after officials…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.