Trump ‘border czar’ plans to reinstate family detention centers

Tom Homan, the incoming “border czar” for President-elect Trump’s administration, said in an interview with The Washington Post published Thursday he will reinstate policies that hold families in detention centers

“You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position,” he told the outlet.

Homan said new detention centers will need to be constructed with a capacity to hold families exiting the country.

“We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” Homan stated. 

“How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was directed by President Biden to get rid of “residential centers” that held families in 2021, along with other deportation tactics that were deemed inhumane by some.

In an earlier interview with CNN, Homan estimated 100,000 beds would be needed for mass deportation efforts. 

“This will be an expense — this will be an expensive operation. But in the long run, it should be a — it would be a huge tax savings on the American people,” Homan said in the interview.

He is familiar with the ins and outs of the deportation process, having worked with ICE for over three decades and helped deport 400,000 people in 2012 as a senior official.

Although he will no longer directly lead the agency, he will work alongside South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), Trump's nominee for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to carry out border security efforts.

Homan plans to launch a targeted investigation into the 300,000 teens and children in the country whose caretakers have stopped reporting to federal caseworkers.

“I think some of these children will be in forced labor, and some will be in the sex trade,” he said. “I think some will be perfectly fine. We just want to make sure.”

The Hill has reached out to the Trump transition team for additional comments.