In a recent interview, Tom Homan, who is set to take on the role of “border czar” under President-elect Trump, indicated that establishing halfway homes for the children of non-U.S. citizens could be an essential component of the administration’s strategy for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Homan explained that addressing the situation involving U.S. citizen children poses challenges, stating, “We’re not going to detain your U.S. citizen children, which means, you know, they’re going to be put in a halfway house.”
He further elaborated, suggesting that children could either reside in a halfway house or remain at home while waiting for officers to arrange travel plans to reunite the family.
This confirmation from Homan comes as Trump’s administration prepares to reinstate family detention centers, a key element of the mass deportation initiatives that the president-elect has declared will be unprecedented in scale.
Trump has made bold claims about deporting every individual residing in the U.S. without legal status and intends to scrutinize the legal status of many who are currently in the country legally.
In light of criticisms regarding the potential cruelty of such actions, Homan proposed that families with mixed immigration statuses should consider “self-deporting” instead of facing intensified immigration enforcement.
Additionally, Trump has raised the possibility of challenging birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution. Homan clarified that having a child born in the U.S. will not exempt parents from deportation.
“Having a U.S. citizen child does not make you immune to our laws, and that’s not the message we want to send to the whole world, that you can have a child and you’re immune to through the laws of this country,” he stated during the NewsNation interview.
