Thomas Homan, who will be Donald Trump’s “border czar” in the next administration, denied claims the president-elect will remove U.S. citizens under the planned mass deportation operation.
Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday, Homan, the former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, said “exactly not” when asked about comments from The View’s Ana Navarro. The co-host of the ABC show had said that the removal of millions of people thought to be in the country illegally would also mean deporting family members who are legal citizens.
The president-elect has vowed to implement the largest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in history. Homan had told CBS News’ 60 Minutes in October that “families can be deported together” when the next Trump administration carries out its illegal immigration plans. Navarro said: “What he is saying is that U.S. citizens can be deported. What he is saying is that if the parent is undocumented and they have U.S. citizen children or U.S. citizen spouses, and you don’t want to separate them, then let’s deport the U.S. citizens.”
Details are still unclear about how exactly he will carry out the sweeping mass deportation campaign proposal, as well as how much such an operation would cost. Trump recently told NBC News that his plans will have “no price tag.”
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s campaign team and ICE for comment via email.
During his time as ICE director under Trump’s presidency, Homan oversaw the“zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policy, which separated thousands of parents from their children at the southern border.
Homan has denied that Trump’s mass deportation policy would result in legal U.S. citizens being removed with their families and stated that only criminals and gang members should be concerned.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images
“Exactly not. The View, it’s like the island of misfit toys; they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Homan told Hannity.
“President Trump made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first. That’s what the focus will be. There are over 1.5 million convicted criminal aliens in this country with orders for removal who we’ll be looking for, there are thousands of gang members we’ll be looking for.
“If you’re in the country illegally, you shouldn’t feel comfortable, absolutely not. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I were in another country illegally; you shouldn’t be comfortable either,” Homan added. “When you enter this country illegally, you have committed a crime. You’re a criminal, and you’re not off the table.”
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, previously told Newsweek that the president-elect would “make provisions for mixed status families.”
“He will restore his effective immigration policies, implement brand-new crackdowns that will send shock waves to all the world’s criminal smugglers, and marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history,” Leavitt said.
Homan also told Fox & Friends on Monday that focusing on workplaces and sex trafficking will be one way to implement Trump’s new deportation plans.
“Where do we find most victims of sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking? At work sites,” Homan said.
Heidi Altman, director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, said this approach is unlikely to help victims.
“He’s conflating the traffickers with the people being trafficked,” Altman told The Hill.”Tom Homan is skilled at using public safety rhetoric to justify vicious tactics that tear families apart.”
The American Immigration Council estimated in an October report that a one-time mass deportation of roughly 13 million illegal migrants in the U.S. could cost at least $315 billion.
This figure also accounts for about 11 million people who as of 2022 lacked permanent legal status as well as around 2.3 million people who crossed the southern border illegally and were released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from January 2023 through April 2024.
“We wish to emphasize that this figure is a highly conservative estimate,” the group said in a statement. “It does not take into account the long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period of time.”
Polling during the campaign showed majority support for mass deportations among voters, but exit polls on Election Day showed stronger support for pathways to legal status for undocumented migrants over deporting them, while immigration slipped down voters’ priority lists.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
