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 as early as 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’ve got to end catch-and-release — and that includes family units, too,” he added, using a phrase sometimes used to describe migrants’ being released from detention while they await immigration court proceedings.
ICE stopped detaining families who enter the country illegally with their children not long after President Joe Biden took office, though administration officials last year considered reviving the practice.
Homan, whom Trump announced as his border czar on Nov. 10, less than a week after he won a second term, said plans are still being discussed.
He said that if the Trump administration chooses to go with family detention, “we’re going to try and surge immigration judges to these locations.”
During the first Trump administration, Homan backed the “zero tolerance” policy that sparked bipartisan outcry. The policy allowed young children to be separated from their parents.
Homan said Thursday that he does not foresee migrant children being separated from their parents on a large scale in Trump's deportation effort.
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“I don’t envision that at all,” he said.
A federal court ruling known as the Flores Settlement Agreement limits the time migrant children can be held in detention to 20 days.
Homan said Thursday that he is in favor of challenging that legal framework, which would complicate using any family detention centers.
"We're looking at what the law currently says, but then again I think we need to litigate some of the decisions," he said. "I think the Flores Settlement Agreement is something that was a wrong decision.
“Right now, we know what the rules say. And this is something that we’ll work within until we get another decision or a better decision from the courts,” he said.
Homan said the number of detention facilities would depend on the data. At the start of the Biden administration, ICE operated three facilities.
"I've got to get the data, which we're now getting access to, to find out how many do we need," Homan said. "And again, based on the data, how are we going to do it."
He said detention facilities would be not jails but "open-air campuses" designed for families.
Homan suggested that the Trump administration would not consider whether people who are in the country without authorization have children who are U.S. citizens.
He said parents who lose their immigration cases "are going to have to make a decision what you want to do: You can either take your child with you or leave the child here in the United States with a relative."
Homan also criticized local governments, like San Diego County and Los Angeles, that have taken steps they say will protect undocumented immigrants, and which prevent or restrict local resources available to federal immigration authorities.
“We’re going to do this operation, with or without,” Homan said of the deportation plan. “If they want to sit back and watch — disappointing, but we’re going to do it.”
Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who headed lawsuits to reunite migrant children during Trump’s first term, said the ACLU is prepared to challenge any aspects of the deportation plan they see as unconstitutional.
“We have challenged family detention in the past. We’ll have to see what they actually do,” Gelernt told NBC News on Thursday. “But I'm hopeful the American public will not want little children spending days, weeks, potentially months, in a detention center.”
Gelernt said a court order prohibits the government from directly taking children away from their parents, but Homan’s comments suggest the new administration plans to go after families by indirect means, by forcing parents to make awful decisions about whether to leave their children in the U.S.
“We would have thought they would have learned the lesson the first time around — that even if the public wants the immigration laws changed, they don’t want children and families to be targeted,” he said.
Trump campaigned on a pledge to deport people who are in the country without authorization. Details of his plan have not been made clear; he has said his administration will start with those who have committed crimes.
On the campaign trail, he referred to migrants as an "invasion.” Some Republicans have tried to tone down Trump's threats of mass deportations after his election victory.
