One of the most horrific and inhumane policies practiced by Donald Trump’s first administration was the separation of migrant families—a sadistic program that caused irreparable harm made even worse by the Trump White House’s refusal to pay for mental health services for the people it scarred. As of January 2024, i.e. years after the policy was suspended due to deafening backlash, some children had not yet been reunited with their parents.
Asked twice during the vice presidential debate if he and Trump would again break up families during a second term, JD Vance chose not to answer. Meanwhile, Trump has defended the practice of separating families, claiming it was an effective deterrent.
But Tom Homan, who served as Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from January 2017 to June 2018—and who Trump has said would join a second administration—apparently has another idea: just deport entire families. Including, presumably, ones with citizens among them.
Asked during an interview with 60 Minutes if there is a way to “carry out mass deportation,” which Trump has pledged to do, “without separating families,” Homan told reporter Cecilia Vega, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.” Discussing a hypothetical wherein an undocumented grandmother is found in a home where the government is targeting someone else for removal, he said he would let a “judge decide” if that grandmother should also be deported. “If I’m in charge of this,” he added, “my priorities are public safety threats and national security threats first.”
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Trump has vowed to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American History,” starting on “day one.” At a conference earlier this year, Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s family separation program, said of the plan: “You grab illegal immigrants and then you move them to the staging ground and that’s where the planes are waiting for federal law enforcement to then move those illegals home. You deputize the National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement.” (On Sunday, Miller declared, “America is for Americans and Americans only,” a line with disturbing historical parallels.)
Homan is not the only one who’s suggested that a Trump administration might deport US citizens. Last week, the former president himself declared that prosecutor Jack Smith should be thrown out of the country, suggesting that (1) Trump believes taking legal action against him is grounds for removal and (2) that he can deport US citizens.
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