Trump Border Czar Tom Homan: Illegal Parents Will Make Sophie’s Choice About Citizen Kids
Parents will be separated from their children and deported if they are in the United States illegally, according to Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan.
Homan said the new administration won’t hesitate to kick out parents even if they have children born in the United States.
The only concession, he told the Washington Post, was that the families would be left to decide whether to leave the country together – or be split up.
“Here’s the issue, you knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position,” said Homan, who oversaw the border policy during Trump’s first term that resulted in more than 4,000 children being separated from their parents.
Homan said he will also reintroduce detention centers for families with children. The detainees will be held in “soft-sided” tent structures in the compounds.
President Biden shut down three ICE “residential centers’ in 2021 after doctors and human rights advocates complained the detention harmed the children.
Homan will be working closely with Trump’s choice as head of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota. He told the Post: “We’re going to need to construct family facilities. How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”
But he added: “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 didn’t offer a number for possible deportations saying he didn’t want to set “himself up for disappointment.”
Homan added: “I don’t see this thing as being sweeps and the military going through neighborhoods.” But he said there would be a targeted campaign aimed primarily at migrants with criminal records.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told the Post he did not believe the American people signed up for children being separated from their families.
“The incoming administration has refused to acknowledge the horrific damage it did to families and little children the first time around and seems determined to once again target families for gratuitous suffering,” he said. “The public may have voted in the abstract for mass deportations, but I don’t think they voted for more family separation or unnecessary cruelty to children.”
The move to give illegal parents with citizen children a drastic choice has a parallel to another Trump priority: ending birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” has been interpreted as a guarantee of citizenship to any baby, except that of a diplomat, born in the U.S. But Trump plans to challenge it, claiming “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means it does not apply to illegal immigrants. Some legal experts think forcing family separations would be used by the Trump administration to force a court challenge and ultimately a Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship.
