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 Florence Project says they’ll continue to represent the migrant children as long as they can. And, the groups that could be getting those contracts instead are raising eyebrows. -
Appointed by George W. Bush, Judge Richard Leon in D.C. ruled last week that granting an injunction is “unwarranted” — writing he expects the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will “follow through on its guarantees of consultation.” -
Humane Borders maintains water stations in Arizona’s vast desert borderland and also works with the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office to document migrant deaths. -
The tool, originally reported by Axios, uses data from a July spending report that shows Congress or other federal agencies have put more than $268 billion in federal funds toward powering the Trump administration’s deportation agenda until 2029. -
Andrés Manuel López Beltrán says the revocation of his U.S. visa was politically motivated.
