President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan suggested that the incoming administration is considering using halfway houses to shelter the US-born children of illegal migrants as a part of its mass deportation plan.
“As far as US children — children, that’s going to be a difficult situation, because we’re not going to detain your US citizen children, which means, you know, they’re going to be put in a halfway house,” Homan told NewsNation Thursday, without elaborating on how the plan would work.
The former acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instead urged illegal migrant parents to “self-deport” and “leave on their own behalf.”
“I’ve said many times that if we arrest the parent and they’ve been ordered removed and have a child with them, then they can be removed together, that’s going to be the parent’s decision, or the child can stay here,” he said.
“I mean if you choose to have a US citizen child while you’re in the country illegally, you put yourself in that position, you put your family in that position,” Homan added.
Having a child who is a US citizen “does not make you immune to our laws,” the hardline border czar reiterated.
Meanwhile, the Trump admin also plans to reopen detention centers to hold illegal migrant parents and their noncitizen children, according to the Washington Post.
President Joe Biden closed family detention centers that housed roughly 3,000 migrants in 2021 following criticism from immigration advocates and pediatricians, who said detention was harmful for kids.
Currently, migrant children can only be held in detention for a maximum 20 days, which is shorter than the typical window of time needed for deportation. Homan said the Trump admin will look to change that.
However, Homan has said the incoming admin plans to prioritize deporting illegal migrant criminals, which currently make up roughly 600,000 targets on ICE’s non-detained docket.