Major City Eyed as Ground Zero for Trump’s Mass Deportations
Alina Habba, the lawyer who President-elect Donald Trump says will serve as an Oval Office counselor, falsely claimed Tuesday that Trump did not separate migrant children from their families in his first term, a day after his top incoming border official admitted “it may happen” again.
“I’m not looking to separate families at all,” Tom Homan, who Trump plans to appoint as his “border czar,” told a GOP holiday party in Chicago on Monday evening. “That’s not my goal. My goal is to enforce the law, but if you put yourself in that position, it may happen.”
Asked by Bill Hemmer, co-host of Fox News' America’s Newsroom, whether she had considered the possibility of separating families, Habba denied it ever happened.
“Nobody is breaking up families, nobody is targeting individuals and making sure that one over the other goes out,” she replied. “That doesn’t happen under President Trump, it didn’t happen before.”
That, of course, is false. As many as 2,000 children of migrants who were separated from families during Trump’s first term still haven’t been reunited, out of 5,000 that were, New York magazine reported earlier this year.
Trump has promised to deport millions of migrants and vowed to use the U.S. Armed Forces on domestic soil to do it, rhetoric which Homan has echoed.
The incoming “border czar”, meanwhile, told his Chicago audience Monday that the mass deportation plan will begin in America’s third most populous city.
“We’re going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois,” he said.
He then insulted city and state leaders before asking them to negotiate with him.
“Chicago’s in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks,” Homan said, which local outlet WBEZ reported was received with cheers from the Republican crowd.
Of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, he said: ““If he doesn’t want to help, get the hell out of the way. But if he impedes us—if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien—I will prosecute him.”
He called Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Prizker “terrible” at the same time that he asked them to “come to the table” and work with him.
