President-elect Donald Trump's immigration plan will give families the choice of leaving the country together or being separated, Tom Homan, who is slated to become Trump's “Border Czar,” told The Washington Post. The administration plans to reinstate policies that President Joe Biden had ended, he said.
Homan said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would look to deport families together. Authorities would deport undocumented parents regardless of whether they have a child who was born in the US, or a US citizen. This policy would leave families with the impossible choice of leaving the country together or being divided.
“Here's the issue,” Homan said, blaming the parents. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”
President-elect Donald Trump's immigration plan will also put families in detention centers, a policy that President Joe Biden's administration ended.
“We're going to need to build family facilities,” he said. “How many beds we're going to need will depend on what the data says.”
Homan said that ICE would use tent structures with soft sides to hold families. Biden ended the policy of putting families in detention centers in 2021, closing three ICE centers. However, Biden looked at bringing the policy back in 2023. A report from Harvard University found that the majority of children in a detention facility in Texas between 2018 and 2020 were staying past the maximum amount of time they were allowed to be detained, which is 20 days.
“The conditions that we documented in this study evidence a lack of some fundamental protections owed to children, whatever their immigration status,” said Vasileia Digidiki, director of the Harvard FXB Summer Program on Migration and Refugee Studies.
Originally an Obama appointee, Homan was the architect of the family separation policy that defined Trump's first administration. As the acting director of ICE under Trump, Homan argued that separating children from parents would be an effective deterrent to migrants. His new position of “border czar” will be in the White House, which means it will not require Senate confirmation. Another person likely at the helm of immigration policy during the Trump presidency is Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump's pick to head the Department of Homeland Security.
Homan said he did not want to say a target number for deportations yet. “I'll be setting myself up for disappointment,” he said.
The Trump administration apparently also plans to bring back ICE worksite raids, which Biden ended in 2021.
“We haven't really worked out the plan for worksite enforcement,” Holman said. “We know that employers are going to be upset.”
Holman said he wanted to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” program, a policy from Trump's first presidency that required migrants at the US-Mexico border to stay in Mexico until their asylum hearings in US court. Human rights advocates argue that the program exposes migrants to danger and violates their rights.
Still, Homan maintains that these plans would appeal to Americans. “We need to show the American people we can do this and not be inhumane about it,” he told the Post. “We can't lose the faith of the American people.”
