President-elect Donald Trump’s “border czar” said Thursday that the use of family detention centers for migrants is “on the table,” raising the possibility that the practice ended by the Biden administration could return next year.
“It’s something we’re considering,” Tom Homan, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration, said in an interview.
“Look, we have to end catch and release, and that includes family units too,” he added, using a phrase sometimes used to describe the release of immigrants while they await immigration court proceedings.
ICE stopped detaining families who enter the country illegally with their children shortly after President Joe Biden took office, although administration officials last year considered reviving the practice.
Homan, whom Trump announced as his border czar on Nov. 10, less than a week after winning a second term, said plans are still being discussed.
He said that if the Trump administration decides to opt for family detention, “we are going to try to send immigration judges to these places.”
During the first Trump administration, Homan supported the “zero tolerance” policy that sparked bipartisan protests. The policy allowed young children to be separated from their parents.
Homan said Thursday that he does not foresee immigrant children being separated from their parents on a large scale in Trump’s deportation effort.
“I don’t imagine it at all,” he said.
A federal court ruling known as the Flores Settlement Agreement limits the time migrant children can be detained to 20 days.
Homan said Thursday that he favors challenging that legal framework, which would complicate the use of any family detention center.
“We’re looking at what the law currently says, but I think we need to litigate part of the decision,” he said. “I think the Flores Agreement is a wrong decision.
“At this point we know what the rules say. And this is something we will work on until we get another decision or a better decision from the courts,” he said.
Homan said the number of detention centers would depend on the data. At the beginning of the Biden administration, ICE operated three facilities.
“I have to get the data, which we now have access to, to know how many we need,” Homan said. “And again, based on the data, how are we going to do that?”
He said the detention centers would not be jails but “outdoor campuses” designed for families.
Homan suggested that the Trump administration would not consider whether people who are in the country illegally have children who are U.S. citizens.
He said parents who lose their immigration cases “are going to have to make a decision about what they want to do: You can take your child with you or leave them here in the United States with a family member.”
Homan also criticized local governments, such as San Diego County and Los Angeles, that have taken measures that they say will protect undocumented immigrants and that impede or restrict local resources available to federal immigration authorities.
“We are going to do this operation, with or without,” Homan said of the deportation plan. “If they want to sit back and watch, it will be disappointing, but we’re going to do it.”
Trump campaigned on a promise to deport people found in the country illegally. The details of his plan have remained unclear; He has said his administration will start with those who have committed crimes.
During the election campaign, he referred to immigrants as an “invasion.” Some Republicans have tried to tone down Trump’s threats of mass deportations after his election victory.