President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar said that the forthcoming administration’s deportation efforts will lead to “collateral arrests.”
Tom Homan, former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a new interview that illegal immigrants who are not accused or charged with other crimes should expect to be detained and deported.
“In sanctuary cities, expect a lot of collateral arrests,” Homan told the Washington Examiner in an article published on Dec. 18. “I mean, not priority criminal arrests. We can’t get the bad guy in jail. That means we have to go into the communities and find them, and there may be others. We expect a lot of collateral arrests.”
Collateral arrests refer to individuals who are detained during sweeps made by ICE officials, regardless of whether they were the target of the agency’s specific enforcement action. In sanctuary jurisdictions, local jails are often prevented from handing over criminal illegal immigrants to ICE, forcing the immigration agency to find those criminals in the community at large, post-release.
Homan and other Trump officials have stated that they will prioritize targeting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes or are deemed a threat to U.S. national security. They have also pledged to deport anyone residing in the country illegally, although Trump has indicated he would consider allowing so-called Dreamers—illegal immigrants who have been in the United States since childhood—to remain under certain conditions.
The deportations and immigration enforcement measures will start on the first day of Trump’s administration, Jan. 20, 2025, Homan said. Officials are already making plans on how to expand deportations.
“We’re starting across the country on the same day” that Trump is sworn in, Homan told the outlet. About 24 ICE offices ”cover two or three states“ and ”every field office will be given the direction that they are to begin looking for, arresting, detaining, removing those in the United States that have been arrested for a crime,” he said.
Homan also said he wants to obtain U.S. military aircraft to help with the effort because they would serve “as a force multiplier” in the deportation effort.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States as of 2022, the latest statistics that are available. While campaigning in the 2024 contest, Trump talked about creating the “largest deportation effort in the history of our country” and called for using the National Guard and domestic police forces in the effort.
Some Democratic-led states and some sanctuary cities have already said they would resist such efforts. The California Legislature has convened a special session to try to shield people from potential the new policies, including by boosting legal aid for illegal immigrants facing deportation.
The mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, said last month that he would direct the city’s police force to resist ICE officials from entering the city, telling a local news outlet that he would even go so far as to get arrested over the move.
“More than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there,” Johnston said in the paper. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right? You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who also faces a Republican-led Legislature, said illegal immigrants “are a really important part of our economy” in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing.
“Trying to move them out of the country is irrational,” Evers claimed. “So, we’ll do whatever we can to avoid that.”
Trump and his surrogates, on the other hand, have said that illegal immigrants strain the U.S. economy, including contributing to increased housing prices, inflation, and taking jobs from American citizens or people living in the country legally.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
