Trump’s future “border czar,” Tom Homan, says “halfway homes” for U.S.-born children “may be a necessary part of Trump’s plans for mass deportation” of illegals, The Hill reported on Thursday, December 26, 2024 (read story here).
“As far as U.S. children — children, that’s going to be a difficult situation, because we’re not going to detain your U.S. citizen children, which means, you know, they’re going to be put in a halfway house,” Homan said.
Wait, what? Sticking kids in halfway houses isn’t detaining them? He also didn’t rule out deporting them, adding, “They can — or they can stay at home and wait for the officers to get the travel arrangements and come back to get the family.”
“Having a U.S. citizen child does not make you immune to our laws, and that’s not the message we want to send to the whole world, that you can have a child and you’re immune to through the laws of this country,” Homan said in a NewsNation interview.
So let’s deal with the legal stuff first: Homan (bio here) isn’t a lawyer, so his legal interpretations aren’t authoritative. But as a former cop, he should know the Fourth Amendment prohibits detaining U.S. citizens without a reasonable articulable suspicion they’ve committed a crime, and that includes minors.
Then how, exactly, does he (at Trump’s behest) stick U.S.-born children of illegals in halfway houses, detention centers, or deport them against their will? Basically, the same way the U.S. government imprisoned Japanese-Americans during World War 2 (details here): Forcibly and unconstitutionally.
As for “halfway houses,” the U.S. government has past experience with that, too: Indian boarding schools (details here).
I’m not saying these were good ideas; they weren’t. The Indian boarding schools and Japanese-American internments are among the most shameful episodes in American history.
All I’m saying is past administrations had no problem with violating human rights, the rights of U.S. citizens, or ripping children away from their families and incarcerating them in kiddie concentration camps, and nobody should expect any scruples from Trump or the minions like Homan willing to carry out his cruel orders.
Ultimately, the legality of all this will be for courts to sort out, so the question is whether the Supreme Court still has scruples, or whether they’re under Trump’s thumb, too.
Photo below: An early 20th century Indian boarding school
