Workplace Raids
Donald Trump’s border czar: Thomas D. Homan will serve as the incoming administration’s new handler of immigration and the southern border. The former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social.
Homan, throughout his time at ICE in 2017 and 2018, was a chief architect of the family separation policy, which involved separating children and parents who had crossed the border together so that parents could be criminally prosecuted. In 2018, Homan said the Department of Justice ought “to file charges against the sanctuary cities” and “hold back their funding.”
When 60 Minutes’ Cecilia Vega told Homan last month that one estimate “says it would cost $88 billion to deport a million people a year,” Homan replied: “I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.”
“Is that what American taxpayers should expect?” continued Vega.
“What price do you put on our national security? Is that worth it?” responded Homan.
“Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” pressed Vega.
“Of course there is,” responded Homan. “Families can be deported together.”
Homan last year defended the old family separation policy by declaring that actually families “chose to separate themselves” when they violated the law.
This new round of mass deportations will be a “humane operation,” Homan claimed on Fox News yesterday. “It’s going to be a well-targeted, planned operation conducted by the men of ICE. The men and women of ICE do this daily. They’re good at it.” Given Homan’s defense of the family separations the first time around, it’s not clear what he considers to be “humane” or whether that is out of step with the American public.
“You concentrate on the public safety threats and the national security threats first,” Homan told Fox, claiming that many terrorists slipped into the country under President Joe Biden. This emphasis on violent criminals (some of whom have surely been let in, but are relatively few in number) is an attempt to whitewash what is actually planned for Trump’s second term: workplace raids for low-wage workers whose only crime is simply crossing into the country in the first place, who have in many cases tried to pursue legal pathways to firm up their status but have few options available.
This type of raid has not happened under the Biden administration, but Homan says they will resume after January 20, when Trump returns to office.
Such crackdowns—like the 2018 raids that targeted meat processing plants in Ohio or the 2019 wave targeting chicken processing plants in rural Mississippi—can throw entire communities into disarray, screwing up their economies and leaving tons of vacant job openings at the workplaces ransacked by immigration enforcers.
Scenes from New York: Relevant to the above, but a bit of a New York tangent.
“President [Donald] Trump’s [deportation] plan is going to be a cost savings for the American people,” Tom Homan told Fox. “Because this administration is paying for free airline tickets all over the country, free hotel rooms at $500 bucks a night, free education, free medical care, and that’s in perpetuity…they’re paying $500 bucks a night for a hotel room in New York City, meanwhile there’s empty ICE beds at $127 dollars a night! So President Trump’s plan is going to save taxpayers money
Article from Reason.com
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