Tom Homan plans to use ‘family detention centers’ seen in Donald Trump‘s first term as part of the incoming administration’s plan to get tough on illegal migration.
‘Border czar’ Homan, 63, is seen as a potential star in the Trump administration as he forcefully argues on behalf of the president-elect’s mass deportation programs.
He confirmed that once again Immigrations and Customs Enforcement will put families with children in tent structures, but has offered an assurance his efforts will be executed with care.
‘We need to show the American people we can do this and not be inhumane about it. We can’t lose the faith of the American people,’ he told the Washington Post.
Joe Biden ended the practice in 2021 by closing three dormitory-like facilities with approximately 3,000 beads.
Homan says that the Trump administration will not endeavor to break families up if they deport the parents for being in the United States illegally.
The families – who potentially have young children born in America – will be told to decide for themselves whether to exit the country together or be broken up.
‘You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position,’ Homan said, explaining his attitude toward families who will be placed in these situations.
Tom Homan plans to use ‘family detention centers’ seen in Donald Trump ‘s first term as part of the incoming administration’s plan to get tough on illegal migration
He confirmed that once again Immigrations and Customs Enforcement will put families with children in tent structures, but has offered an assurance his efforts will be executed with care
Ultimately, he says, the goal will be to keep families together, regardless of the legality of how either the parents or the children got to the United States.
‘I’m not saying take them into custody. We’ll let them get the child and put them in proceedings with the child, so they can go to court and plead their case as a family.’
Homan’s point person on this project will likely be Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota who will have ICE in her purview as Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of the Interior.
He also tempered expectations for exact numbers of deportations because he needs to know what kind of budget and flexibility the department will have: ‘I’ll be setting myself up for disappointment.’
Another reversal of Biden’s policy will be a return to the Remain in Mexico program, which forced asylum seekers to wait outside the country while they pled their case to American courts. Biden also ended this in 2021.
He admits that ‘at the beginning’ illegal entries could rise slightly – this year, numbers are down after the Biden administration allowed numbers to get alarmingly high in 2023 – but eventually, the Trump programs will deter people from coming.
‘They’re going to try to come illegally, but once the message is clear that we’re ending catch-and-release, the numbers will reduce.’
He gave a separate interview to The Hill in which he repeated President-elect Trump’s statement that there would be ‘no price tag’ on anti-illegal immigration programs.
Homan says that the Trump administration will not endeavor to break families up if they deport the parents for being in the United States illegally
He admits that ‘at the beginning’ illegal entries could rise slightly – this year, numbers are down after the Biden administration allowed numbers to get alarmingly high in 2023 – but eventually, the Trump programs will deter people from coming
‘What price do you put on the thousands of American moms and dads who buried their children? You want to talk about family separation; they buried their children because their children were murdered by illegal aliens that weren’t supposed to be here. I don’t put a price on that,’ he said.
That could see Trump run afoul of many of the budget-conscious Republican rebels who tanked the president-elect’s (and DOGE co-chair Elon Musk’s) demands on the recent government funding bill.
Although he was handed a resounding mandate by voters on November 5 – ultra-conservative Republicans rejected his Elon Musk-backed demand to lift the debt ceiling.
Thirty-eight fiscal conservatives – including Kentucky ‘s Thomas Massie and South Carolina’s Nancy Mace – defected on Thursday night despite Trump’s loud protestations on his social media platform, TruthSocial.
Then, hours before the deadline on Saturday morning, Congress passed a deal to keep the government funded through February – without lifting the debt ceiling.
Marc Short, Trump’s ex-legislative affairs director, warned that the rebellion ‘did not portend well’ for the president-elect’s bold strategy at the border. Trump’s mass deportation plan is estimated to cost north of $80 billion per year.
The president-elect previously pledged – like Homan did Thursday – that the cost of his plans for the border are ‘not a question of a price tag.’
The border czar has gone anywhere and everywhere to promote Trump’s immigration crackdown, from the border itself to mainstream media to liberal ‘sanctuary’ cities like New York and Chicago.
Thirty-eight fiscal conservatives – including Kentucky ‘s Thomas Massie and South Carolina’s Nancy Mace – defected from Trump’s government funding bill, which could see the president-elect find trouble on his ‘no price tag’ promises at the border
Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, has made clear what Trump’s policies come January 20, 2025, will be.
‘If you are in the country illegally, and you’ve got orders for deportation, were going to arrest you, detain you and remove you,’ he told CNN earlier this week.
‘Having a child in this country does not make you immune to our laws.’
He argued that if the parents were found to be in the country illegally, had court orders to be removed and were evading deportation, they need to be held accountable in accordance with current laws.
Letting parents stay because their children were born in the U.S. means ‘the court order doesn’t mean anything anymore,’ Homan reasoned.
Homan said he wants to arrest as many people as he can with the resources they have, and added that there are millions of fugitives within the U.S. who are pending arrest.
‘We want to arrest as many people as we can that are in the country illegally,’ he said. ‘We want to arrest every criminal, every gang member … If you’re here illegally, you’re not off the table.’
Earlier in the week Homan spoke to Tucker Carlson about the possibility of sending migrants to ‘rich, white’ neighborhoods.
Carlson asked the incoming border czar on his X show Wednesday night: ‘Is there anyway to move millions of Haitians into rich, white, liberal, neighborhoods?’
‘The people who did this are rich, white liberals in the United States who hate themselves and the country and to punish it, they invited all these people illegally from failed countries but they can’t stand the idea of living near these people because they’re racist,’ Carlson said.
Homan responded: ‘We absolutely could do it. Martha’s Vineyard did it!’
Martha’s Vineyard, in particular, was one of the many liberal enclaves migrants were sent via bus by Republican governors in an attempt to ease the burden of their arrival on their states, a point Homan celebrated.
