Former ICE director blasts Biden for Obama administration’s immigration policy

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Tom Homan: 'Trump understands the immigration issue better than any president I worked for'

Former Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan calls out the Obama administration's immigration policy record after the final presidential debate on 'Fox & Friends.'

Former ICE Director Tom Homan on Saturday pushed back against 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden after he accused the Trump administration of executing family separation immigration policy.

“I get angry every time they push a false narrative about this administration,” Fox News contributor Homan told “Fox & Friends.”

Homan pushed back on the notion that children are put into cages while under custody by border patrol agents on the southern border.

“First of all, I don’t call them cages. They are chain-linked dividers that kept children separate from unrelated adults which we should have done, you know, to protect the children. But, if they want to call them cages, fine, but, they got to admit they were approved, funded, constructed, and utilized under the Biden administration,” Homan said.

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Homan's comments came after a contentious moment in Thursday’s presidential debate. Trump attacked former Vice President Joe Biden for the Obama-Biden administration's "catch-and-release" policy, in which illegal immigrants were freed ahead of their court dates after being arrested for being in the country illegally.  

Conservatives have said that allowed those immigrants to skip court dates and disappear into the country. Biden meanwhile attacked Trump on the current administration's family separation policy which, before it ended in 2018, was highly controversial. 

"Parents ... kids were ripped from their arms and they were separated ... those kids are alone, nowhere to go," Biden said of the policy. 

During the debate, Trump replied to Biden’s comment about chidren being separated from parents by pointing out that the infrastructure related to many of the controversies on the border in the past four years was carried over from the Obama-Biden administration. 

"Who built the cages, Joe?" Trump said. 

On "catch and release," Biden disputed that most illegal immigrants did show up for their court dates. Trump said they largely did not.  

"Those with the lowest IQ, they might come back," Trump added.  

"You have 525 kids not knowing where in God's name they're going to be and lost their parents," Biden replied, bringing up the family separation policy again. 

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Homan reacted to Biden accusing Trump of separating migrant children from their families at the southern border.

“Joe Biden talks about separating families. Let me say something I never said on TV before. I put it in my book though,” Homan said. 

Homan mentioned that he was called into the White House “twice to have a meeting with the staff” to take orders to do a “nationwide operation to go arrest children that enter the country illegally” by “sending armed agents to their homes.”

“Arrest children and deport them from the country away from their family,” Homan said.

Homan went on to say, “That is far more inhumane than anything the Trump administration has been accused of doing. You want to talk about family separation? Now, what happened at the border, they will be separated because a parent was prosecuted. That happens to American families across this country every day. If I get arrested tonight for a DUI with a child in the car, I am getting separated. That is a necessary thing to happen when a parent gets prosecuted at the border.”

Homan said that Trump "understands the immigration issue better than any president he ever worked for."

Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.