Undocumented Parents Set For Deportation Will Have To Decide If They Take Their Children With Them, Border Czar Says

President-elect Donald Trump's incoming border czar, Tom Homan, anticipated how authorities will handle families chosen for deportation in the administration, as well as the choice that will be given to those with undocumented parents but children who are U.S. citizens.

Concretely, he said families will be held in tent-like structures similar to those used by immigration enforcement officials when they encounter immigration surges. Called "residential centers," the facilities held some 3,000 beds as well as recreational and educational programming.

Immigration advocates and pediatricians said they were harmful for children, but Homan pointed at the need to make use of them. "We're going to need to construct family facilities," he said. "How many beds we're going to need will depend on what the data says."

Trump has already said he is open to building facilities to hold people selected for deportation, including camps. In his interview with Time magazine, in which he was named "Person of the Year," Trump said he will do "whatever it takes to get them out." "Again, I'll do it absolutely within the confines of the law, but if it needs new camps, but I hope we're not going to need too many because I want to get them out, and I don't want them sitting in camp for the next 20 years."

The president-elect went on to say that the deportees' countries of origin "have got to take them back," anticipating that if they don't his administration "won't do business with those countries" and impose substantial tariffs on them. "When they send products in, they will have substantial tariffs, and it's going to make it very hard for them to do business with us," he added.

Looking at the fate of families where parents are undocumented but children are not, Homan reiterated the incoming administration's willingness of deporting them all together or giving parents a choice to leave them behind. "You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position," he said.

Trump has also addressed family deportations, saying he doesn't believe families will be separated "because we will send the whole family back to the country." I would much rather deport them together, yes, than separate."