Tom Homan, former acting director of ICE, will lead border enforcement efforts under the new Trump administration, according to an announcement from President-Elect Donald Trump on Sunday night.
Trump says Homan will oversee the borders as well as maritime and aviation security as the "border czar."
Border czar is an unofficial title that doesn’t require Senate approval — unlike the heads of ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
Trump says Homan will also be in charge of carrying out deportations — during his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that as president he’d deport roughly 11 million longtime U.S. residents who are undocumented.
The plan would impact 1 in 12 people nationwide, either through deportation itself or separation from undocumented family members, according to data analyzed by the advocacy group FWD.us.
In an interview with "60 Minutes" before the election, Homan also said mixed immigration families could avoid getting separated by choosing to be deported together. The scheme could cost some $88 billion a year, according to the American Immigration Council.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway says Trump would likely need to rely on local police to help with deportations.
“That creates another problem, if there may be some sheriffs, some police chiefs, that go along with that, that may believe the fear rhetoric about migrants,” he said.
Proposition 314 — the ballot initiative Arizona voters passed this month — calls for state and local police to carry out immigration-related arrests.
Hathaway says his deputies don’t have the training or resources to carry out that kind of enforcement. He’s also worried doing so would open his department up to racial profiling lawsuits, and sow fear and distrust among community members in Nogales and elsewhere in the largely Latino border county.
Provisions within the measure are also on hold while a lawsuit against a similar law in Texas moves forward.
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The Phoenix police chief has put a sergeant on paid leave while an internal investigation of the sergeant’s behavior at an ICE protest in the East Valley is conducted. -
Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to abandon its investigation into the state’s 2020 presidential election. -
Democratic Reps. Greg Stanton, Yassamin Ansari and Adelita Grijalva say they were shocked by the conditions inside the ICE holding facility at Mesa Gateway Airport on Thursday evening. -
As the New York Times reports, more than 100 of the roughly 750 immigration judges have been dismissed. About 140 permanent and temporary judges have been appointed in the wake of those firings — including former DHS prosecutors. -
DHS is now planning something more modest, starting out with 250 people per week and capping occupied beds at 542, according to Surprise Mayor Kevin Sartor.
