The incoming “border czar” for President-elect Trump’s administration, Tom Homan, expressed in a recent interview with The Washington Post that he intends to revive policies involving the detention of families at border facilities.
He remarked, “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position,” addressing the responsibilities of families crossing the border illegally.
Homan emphasized the necessity of constructing new detention centers that would accommodate families being removed from the country. He stated, “We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” adding that the required capacity would be determined by available data on family units.
In 2021, President Biden mandated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to dismantle “residential centers” designed to house families, alongside other deportation measures criticized as inhumane.
During a previous interview with CNN, Homan predicted that approximately 100,000 beds would be required for the mass deportation initiatives. “This will be an expense — this will be an expensive operation. But in the long run, it should be a — it would be a huge tax savings on the American people,” he explained.
Having dedicated over three decades to ICE, Homan is well-versed in the deportation process, having facilitated the removal of 400,000 individuals in 2012 as a senior official.
Although he will not lead the agency directly, he will collaborate with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who is Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to implement border security strategies.
Homan aims to initiate a focused investigation concerning the 300,000 minors in the U.S. whose guardians have ceased communication with federal caseworkers. “I think some of these children will be in forced labor, and some will be in the sex trade,” he noted, adding, “I think some will be perfectly fine. We just want to make sure.”
