Trump’s top border adviser said he will bring back family detention

U.S. immigration authorities will once more put families with children in detention centers when President-elect Donald Trump returns to office next month, according to incoming White House “border czar” Tom Homan.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will look to hold parents with children in “soft-sided” tent structures similar to those used by U.S. border officials to handle immigration surges, Homan said. The government will not hesitate to deport parents who are in the country illegally, even if they have young U.S.-born children, he added, leaving it to those families to decide whether to exit together or be split up.

“Here’s the issue,” Homan said in a wide-ranging interview that included some of his most extensive comments to date on Trump’s plans for mass deportations. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”

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President Joe Biden ended family detention in 2021, closing three facilities ICE called “residential centers” that offered about 3,000 beds. The facilities had a dorm-like design with recreational and educational programming. They were criticized by immigration advocates and pediatricians who said detention was harmful for children.

The federal judge who oversees immigration detention programs involving minors has set 20 days as the maximum amount of time children can be held at the family facilities. The deportation process often requires more time, so ICE has generally preferred to prioritize easier-to-remove adults. But Homan said that may change once Trump takes office.

“We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” he said. “How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”

Homan will not be directing ICE operations as part of his White House role. But he will work closely on border and immigration issues with Kristi L. Noem, now governor of South Dakota and Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.

As acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, Homan drove the “zero tolerance” policy that separated more than 4,000 children from their parents soon after they crossed the border into the United States. He said Trump’s new enforcement campaign will seek to deport families together. But he acknowledged the government cannot remove children who are U.S. citizens, leaving it to parents to decide whether they would split up the family.

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After retiring from ICE in 2018, Homan became a regular guest on Fox News, advocating the kind of unsentimental, unapologetic approach to immigration enforcement that seems to appeal to Trump. But of all the border hard-liners in the incoming administration, Homan is perhaps the most cognizant of the limits of the government’s ability to deliver on promises of mass deportation — and the potential for a political backlash. During a 34-year career at the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE, he saw wide swings in public support for immigration enforcement.

“We need to show the American people we can do this and not be inhumane about it,” he said. “We can’t lose the faith of the American people.”

Homan was a senior official at ICE in 2012 when the agency deported more than 400,000 people, an all-time high. He said he was not ready to commit to a target number of deportations until he knows what resources will be available to expand ICE capacity: “I’ll be setting myself up for disappointment.”

Trump and other senior advisers have pledged to use National Guard troops to help boost deportations. Homan said troops could help with transportation and other support functions, but only trained law enforcement officers will be able to make immigration arrests. “I don’t see this thing as being sweeps and the military going through neighborhoods,” he said, insisting it will be a “targeted” campaign aimed at people who have criminal records.

Homan said he will launch a separate campaign to locate more than 300,000 teens and children that he and other Trump allies have frequently described as “missing.” Legal experts say that descriptor is a stretch; most of the young migrants and their guardians have simply stopped responding to government caseworkers.

Many unaccompanied minors taken into U.S. custody along the border are by law transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency is responsible for identifying a sponsor — typically another family member already living in the United States — who can take custody of the minor and ensure compliance with U.S. immigration laws.

The government conducts follow-up welfare checks, typically via phone call, but some of the minors and their guardians can’t be reached or do not respond.

Since 2019, about 450,000 unaccompanied minors have been transferred to ORR, according to a Department of Homeland Security oversight report published in August. During that time, 32,000 did not show up for scheduled court hearings, and an additional 291,000 were not issued a notice to appear by ICE.

Homan acknowledged that many of those young people are probably with their parents or other family members, but he said he wants to mobilize nonprofit groups and private contractors to carry out a more concerted effort to track them down. He said he was not sure how he would get additional funding to implement a more rigorous system of oversight.

“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.”

Yet Homan also said parents who have migrated illegally to the United States, sent for their children and then reclaimed them from U.S. government custody should be placed in deportation proceedings — exactly the reason many avoid responding to government check-ins.

“I’m not saying take them into custody,” he said. “We’ll let them get the child and put them in proceedings with the child, so they can go to court and plead their case as a family.”

Immigration advocates have raised alarm at previous attempts to use the refugee resettlement sponsor program for enforcement purposes, arguing that parents and relatives will not come forward to claim children if they fear arrest by ICE. Stephen Miller, the longtime Trump aide who is returning to the White House as a senior policy adviser, attempted unsuccessfully in 2019 to embed a senior ICE official at the refugee resettlement office in 2019.

That official, Caleb Vitello, has been designated by Trump to be acting ICE director when he is inaugurated in January.

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who argued many of the highest-profile immigration cases during Trump’s first term, including the challenge to family separations, said the president-elect’s immigration enforcement picks appear to be dusting off their old playbook.

“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,” Gelernt said.

In electing Trump, he added, “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.”

Worksite raids by ICE, which Biden ended, will return with Trump, Homan said. “We haven’t really worked out the plan for worksite enforcement,” he said. “We know that employers are going to be upset.”

He said he also wants the new administration to bring back the “Remain in Mexico” program, which required asylum seekers to wait outside U.S. territory while their claims were considered in U.S. courts. Biden ended that program after taking office in 2021.

Illegal border crossings subsequently soared to record levels but have fallen sharply this year as the Biden administration implemented sweeping asylum restrictions and pushed deportations to a 10-year high.

Biden officials have offset their crackdown with a major expansion of “lawful pathways” that allow roughly 70,000 migrants per month to apply to enter the United States legally. Internal audits have found the sponsorship programs have been exploited by traffickers in some instances.

In particular, he said he will review the government’s use of the CBP One mobile app, which the Biden administration has used as a queue management tool. It offers 1,450 appointments per day for migrants to make humanitarian claims at official border crossings. Homan said it has facilitated fraudulent claims.

Asked whether illegal crossings could end up increasing if Trump takes away the app and other legal entry channels, Homan said strict enforcement — including not releasing migrants into the country while their asylum claims are processed — will produce a deterrent effort.

“At the beginning we may see numbers coming up when we shut these programs down,” he said. “They’re going to try to come illegally, but once the message is clear that we’re ending catch-and-release, the numbers will reduce.”