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Donald Trump’s border tsar has vowed a “shock and awe” approach to deportations in the first week of the new administration, with sweeping raids targeting undocumented migrants in cities across the US.
Tom Homan said that the incoming president would immediately unveil a series of executive orders directing “targeted enforcement operations” by federal officers against immigrants with criminal records.
“You’re going to see — in the first week — you’re going to see the shock and awe on the border and you’re going to see it in the interior,” Homan told Fox News on Saturday.
“They’re going to be targeted enforcement operations. When [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] goes out, they’re going to know exactly who they’re looking for and pretty much where they’ll find them.”
Trump made immigration a central pillar of his re-election campaign, employing increasingly draconian language at rallies that included accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country”.
He has promised to pursue the “largest deportation programme of criminals in the history of America” beginning on the first day of his return to the White House.
“It’ll begin very early, very quickly,” Trump said in a separate interview with NBC on Saturday. “We have to get the criminals out of our country.”
The president-elect declined to say which cities would be targeted first “because things are evolving”, but Homan has previously indicated that Democrat-run Chicago would be “ground zero” for the raids.
On Saturday, Homan warned Democrats in so-called “sanctuary cities” that failure to co-operate with ICE officials in apprehending migrants with criminal records would cause federal authorities to pursue larger raids leading to a greater number of arrests and deportations.
“These sanctuary policies are going to force us into communities and the result is going to be exactly what they don’t want — more aliens arrested, more collaterals arrested, because they forced us into this position.”
The directives on immigration will be part of a “record-setting number” of executive orders the incoming president has said he will sign on his first day in office, alongside others on tariffs, energy and deregulation.
Neither Trump nor Homan would give specifics as to what the migration orders would entail, but people familiar with the plans said they would probably stir debate over the president’s powers to involve the military.
“I think there’s going to be a serious conversation about whether he has the authority to send troops to the border — or do you just send the National Guard in a higher number?” said one Republican member of Congress.
“That’s something that you should expect.”
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