President-elect Donald Trump's next "border czar" Tom Homan will be tasked with carrying mass deportations over the next four years. Despite countless warnings of the economic repercussions mass deportations could have in the U.S., Homan is seemingly moving forward with the plan, sitting down with conservative media to provide more insight into how they will take shape.
Homan is no new character to the Trump camp. In fact, during his first term, he served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leading ICE's "Zero Tolerance" policy, which was widely criticized for its family separation. Now, he is looking forward to more ambitious plans.
Throughout the campaign cycle, Trump promised he would carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history. But when faced with questions about its logistics, particularly how they would fund a deportation program seeking to repatriate potentially millions of undocumented migrants, little details were offered. Homan is now seeking to answer some of those questions, a new NBC News analysis suggests.
"President Trump has made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first and that's what the focus would be," Homan said of the deportation plan in an interview on Fox News' "Hannity" program on Nov. 11. "There's thousands of gang members, illegal alien gang members we're going to be looking for. Now, I'm going to say if you're in the country illegally, you shouldn't feel comfortable, absolutely not. I won't feel comfortable."
Homan has also provided some insight into how the military might be enlisted to add manpower to the operation. Homan said in an interview on Nov. 12 that he sees the potential role of service members as most helpful with tasks that do not require explicit immigration authority.
The Defense Department "has helped several administrations on the border. They could be a force multiplier," Homan said. The military, he continued, "could be used to help relieve law enforcement officers from administrative duties so they can get on the street and do what they're supposed to be doing."
"For instance, DOD could help with transportation. They could help ground transportation; they could help with air flights out. They can help with infrastructure building. They could help with intelligence, things that don't require immigration authority. So if DOD can help me, great," he said.
The question of funding, however, remains unanswered. Homan will have no official authority over how much funding he will have for his mass deportation operations. But he has said that funding would most likely have to come from Congress for a long-term operation, according to NBC News.
"Well, $86 billion is the minimum," Homan said Sunday about the cost of the deportation on Fox Business' "Sunday Morning Futures," noting that the administration would need an assist from Congress for the funding.
"This operation is going to be expensive to begin with, but in the long run, there's going to be huge tax savings for the American taxpayer," he added, without providing further details about how exactly the funding would be spent or distributed to federal and local agencies or whether allies in Congress have assured the incoming administration that the sum is feasible.
Homan has also touted the need for cooperation from local authorities to carry out his plans. He has expressed his desire to meet with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, which is set to happen on Dec. 12, to discuss forming an alliance in mass deportation efforts. He has also called out Democratic mayors and governors for their promises to not collaborate with ICE and other federal immigration agents.
"I've seen some of these Democratic governors say they're going to stand in the way. They're going to make it hard for us. A suggestion: if you're not going to help us, get the hell out of the way, because we're going to do it," he said.
Homan's promises come as immigration experts and advocates have long warned of potential devastating effects in mass deportations. In fact, they even testified on the matter Tuesday during a Senate hearing, arguing that these efforts would have unintended consequences for Americans.
"The president-elect's mass deportation plans would crash the American economy, break up families and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly 4% of the entire U.S. population," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the non-partisan American Immigration Council, said in Congress.
An analysis by his group estimates that it would cost nearly $1tn to carry out Trump's mass deportation plan and slash the annual GDP between 4.2% and 6.8%— a level on par with the recession of 2008, The Guardian reports.
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