The Trump administration is preparing to build “family facilities” as part of its plans for mass deportation, where citizen children will be detained alongside their undocumented parents before being deported. This initiative has been outlined by Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for border czar, who will oversee these operations.
Homan explained the need for these facilities in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” he said. “How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”
This move is part of Donald Trump’s promise to arrest, detain, and deport people living in the U.S. without legal documentation. The plan includes involving federal, state, and local law enforcement to carry out these actions in immigrant communities nationwide. Trump and Homan have emphasized that U.S.-born children of undocumented parents will not be exempt from these deportations.
“Here’s the issue,” Homan stated. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”
During Trump’s first term, Homan served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where he implemented the controversial “zero tolerance” policy. This policy led to the separation of more than 4,000 children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Homan has clarified that the decision to keep families together or separate them will ultimately rest with the deported parents. “I’m not looking to separate families at all. That’s not my goal,” he said. “My goal is to enforce the law. But if you put yourself in that position, it may happen.”
The administration’s proposed approach marks a shift from the Biden administration’s policies, which ended family detention in 2021 and closed several ICE-operated family detention centers. Federal law currently mandates that minors held in detention be released within 20 days, a guideline that the Trump team is likely to challenge as it develops plans to detain families in larger, tent-like structures.
Over 16.7 million people in the U.S. live with at least one undocumented family member, including approximately six million children under 18, according to the American Immigration Council. Deporting such a large number of individuals would require significant resources. Experts estimate the cost of a mass deportation program over 11 years to be at least $1 trillion.
Homan indicated that immigration arrests will primarily target individuals with criminal records, a priority for ICE under previous administrations as well. However, advocacy groups argue that most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. do not have criminal records and are otherwise law-abiding individuals who contribute to their communities and pay taxes.
ICE is also considering expanding detention facilities in at least six states, according to documents obtained by the ACLU. Private prison companies and contractors have already submitted proposals to support these expansions. “You cannot have mass deportations without a significant expansion of ICE detention capacity,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project.
Critics, including Cho, have condemned these plans as inhumane and costly. “Rather than permanently shutting down abusive detention facilities, the Biden administration is paving the way for President-elect Donald Trump to make good on his cruel and inhumane mass deportation proposals,” she stated.
Trump’s vision for immigration enforcement also includes nominating Kristi Noem as Homeland Security director and potentially deploying the National Guard to assist law enforcement. However, Homan clarified that the military’s role would not involve making arrests but supporting targeted operations.
While the Trump administration frames these efforts as a way to uphold the law, advocacy groups and legal experts argue that the proposed measures will cause widespread harm to immigrant families and communities.
