In an interview with The Washington Post, Tom Homan, future “border czar,” explained that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will detain adults with minor children who do not have the necessary permits to be in North American territory, and then take them to detention centers.
He warned that they will not take into account whether the minors were born in the United States and have American nationality, since it will be a decision of the families whether they leave together or separately.
“The problem is this: You knew you were in the country illegally and you decided to have a child. So you were the one who put your family in that position,” Homan said.
He added that Donald Trump’s government, which will begin on January 20, will build detention centers, which will be similar to those that were set up during his first term.
“We are going to have to build facilities for families. The number of beds we will need will depend on what the data indicates,” he commented.
Donald Trump applied this same measure during his first term, in 2018, when Tom Homan was director of ICE, which is why the latter is considered the architect of the controversial policy of separating migrant families.
On that occasion, more than 4,600 children were separated from their parents, since the latter did not have documents to remain in the country. However, in 2021, Joe Biden closed detention centers for migrant families.
Mexico prepares
Meanwhile, the Mexican government is already preparing actions to support Mexicans who are taken to immigration detention centers, such as legal advice through the Zoom platform, reported the Mexican ambassador to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma.
“And I think that this task is going to intensify in the coming months and we are going to have to have a much more agile relationship with these centers. One of the important things is that it became clear that we are going to be able to have meetings with Mexican people via zoom and that will greatly speed up the advice that can be provided to them,” he said yesterday Thursday from his social networks.
When visiting Mexicans at the Farmville Immigration Detention Center, Virginia, he mentioned that the Mexican government will be attentive to Mexican migrants and assured that “they are not alone.”
Another action will be the launch of an application for mobile phones that will serve as an “alert button.” This will allow Mexicans to immediately alert the consulate, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and designated family members if they are detained in the United States.
“The idea is that it is a very simple application, because we want it primarily for truly emergency cases,” said Foreign Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente.
Meanwhile, President Claudia Sheinbaum has emphasized that Mexico will only welcome its compatriots, so the United States must repatriate each migrant to their country of origin.
