Trump’s border czar unveils bold new plans for mass deportations… but promises not to be ‘inhumane’

Tom Homan plans to use ‘family detention centers’ from Donald Trump’s first term as part of the new administration’s plan to crack down on illegal migration.

“Border czar” Homan, 63, is seen as a potential star in the Trump administration as he strongly advocates the newly elected president’s mass deportation programs.

He confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will again place families with children in tents, but gave assurances that his efforts will be carried out with care.

“We have to show the American people that we can do this and not be inhumane about it. We cannot lose the faith of the American people,” he told The Guardian Washingtonpost.

Joe Biden ended the practice in 2021 by closing three dormitory-style facilities with about 3,000 beads.

Homan says the Trump administration will not try to separate families if they deport parents for being in the United States illegally.

The families – who may have young children born in America – will be told they must decide for themselves whether to leave the country together or split 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 find themselves in these situations.

Ultimately, he says, the goal will be to keep families together, regardless of the legality of how the parents or children ended up in the United States.

“I’m not saying you should take them into custody. We let them take the child and put them in a proceeding with the child so they can go to court and argue their case as a family.”

Homan’s point person for this project will likely be Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, who will have ICE in her purview as Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior.

He also tempered expectations about the exact numbers of deportations, because he needs to know what budget and flexibility the department will have: “I’m going to disappoint myself.”

Another reversal of Biden’s policies will be a return to the Remain in Mexico program, which forced asylum seekers to wait outside the country while they argued their cases in U.S. courts. Biden also put an end to this in 2021.

He concedes that illegal entries might rise slightly “initially” — numbers have fallen this year after the Biden administration allowed numbers to become alarmingly high in 2023 — but ultimately Trump’s programs will deter people from coming .

“They’re going to try to come illegally, but once the message is clear that we’re going to stop catch and release, the numbers will drop.”

He gave a separate interview about it The hill in which he reiterated President-elect Trump’s statement that there would be “no price tag” on anti-illegal immigration programs.

“What price do you put on the thousands of American mothers and fathers who have buried their children? You want to talk about family separation; they buried their children because their children were murdered by illegal aliens who should not have been here. “I don’t put a price on that,” he said.

That could lead Trump to clash with many of the budget-conscious Republican rebels who have undermined the newly elected president’s (and DOGE co-chairman Elon Musk’s) demands for the recent funding bill.

Although he received a strong mandate from voters on November 5, ultra-conservative Republicans rejected his Elon Musk-backed demand to lift the debt ceiling.

Thirty-eight fiscal conservatives — including Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — defected Thursday evening, despite Trump’s loud protests on his social media platform TruthSocial.

Then, hours before the deadline on Saturday morning, Congress approved a deal to keep the government funded through February — without lifting the debt ceiling.

Marc Short, Trump’s former legislative affairs director, warned that the insurrection “did not bode well” for the newly elected president’s bold strategy at the border. Trump’s mass deportation plan is estimated to cost more than $80 billion per year.

The president-elect previously promised — as Homan did Thursday — that the cost of his plans for the border is “not a matter of a price tag.”

The border czar has gone everywhere to further Trump’s immigration crackdown, from the border itself to the mainstream media and liberal “sanctuary” cities like New York and Chicago.

Homan, former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, has made clear what Trump’s policies will be from January 20, 2025.

“If you are in the country illegally and you have a deportation order, we are going to arrest you, detain you and remove you,” he told CNN earlier this week.

“Having a child in this country does not mean you are immune from our laws.”

He argued that if the parents were found to be in the country illegally, had a court order for their removal and evaded deportation, they should be held accountable in accordance with current laws.

Allowing parents to stay because their children were born in the U.S. means that “the court order no longer means anything,” Homan reasoned.

Homan said he wants to arrest as many people as possible with the resources they have, adding that there are millions of fugitives in the U.S. waiting to be captured.

“We want to arrest as many people as possible who 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 this week, Homan spoke with Tucker Carlson about the possibility of sending migrants to “rich, white” neighborhoods.

Carlson asked the new border czar on his X show Wednesday night: “Is it even possible 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 illegally invited all these people from failed countries, but they can’t bear the idea of ​​being anywhere near these people live because they are “racist,” said Carlson.

Homan responded, “We absolutely could. Martha’s Vineyard did it!’

Martha’s Vineyard in particular was one of several liberal enclaves where migrants were bused by Republican governors in an effort to ease the burden of their arrival on their states, a point Homan celebrated.