Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar” wants officials in America’s third-largest city to “get the hell out of the way” of his plans for mass deportations or risk prosecution.
In remarks to a group of Chicago Republicans on Monday night, Tom Homan said the city and the state of Illinois are “in trouble” because “your mayor sucks and your governor sucks.”
Trump’s pledge to arrest, detain and deport people living in the country without legal permission as part of his “day one” agenda would deploy federal, state and local law enforcement into immigrant communities across the country — starting in the Windy City, according to Homan.
“We’re going to start right here in Chicago,” he said during a holiday party hosted by the Law and Order PAC and the Northwest Side GOP Club.
“If your Chicago mayor doesn’t want to help, he can step aside,” he added. “But if he impedes us — if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien — I will prosecute him.”
Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is expected to carry out what the president-elect has described as “the largest mass deportation operation in American history,” which his allies expect to expand to target potentially millions of people beyond the scope of undocumented immigrants who are accused of committing crimes.
Homan also said that the children of non-citizens are expected to be deported along with their families.
“I’m not looking to separate families at all. That’s not my goal,” Homan said. “My goal is to enforce the law, but if you put yourself in that position, it may happen. But there’s no plan in this administration right now to separate families. It just isn’t. However, we’re going to enforce the law. So if you put yourself in that position, it’s on you.”
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump echoed his pledge to end birthright citizenship, despite the Constitution’s 14th Amendment enshrining a right of citizenship to people who are born in the country.
He also suggested that the children of immigrants who arrived in the country illegally — so called “dreamers” under the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals Act, or DACA — could remain in the country through some mechanism.
Dreamers “can either take a child home with you, or they just stay here,” according to Homan. “But you don’t get a pass.”
Homan also said people who are found “with” targeted immigrants could also face arrest.
“When they go find that bad guy, and when they find him, he’s probably going to be with others, others that are not a priority because they’re not criminals. But guess what? They’re going to be arrested, too,” he said. “Because he forced me into that position. So he wants to play the game. I’ll play that game.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democratic officials across the country have vowed to protect immigrant communities from federal authorities through “sanctuary” provisions.
Homan told him to “get the hell out of the way.”
“Help us protect you,” he said. “But if you don’t, get the hell out of the way.”
“It’s no secret that Illinois will face countless, baseless attacks over the next four years from the Trump Administration,” a spokesperson for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker told The Independent.
“Rather than responding to every ridiculous boast from Trump lackeys, Governor Pritzker is focused on what he was focused on during the first Trump term: leading our state with competence instead of chaos,” the statement added.
Democratic congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez, the first Latina to represent Illinois in Congress, said her Chicago district has been “made stronger and more powerful by immigrants.”
Homan “better be ready to meet the resistance,” she said. “You may think Chicago needs to get out of the way of Trump’s plans for mass deportation, but we plan to get ALL UP IN YOUR WAY.”
ICE “already goes after people with criminal records, all the time,” a priority of the last several presidential administrations, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
“So the overwhelming majority of people who would be the targets of a mass deportation campaign do not have criminal records,” he told members of Congress Tuesday. “They are people who have been living otherwise law-abiding lives, living, working, and in many cases, paying taxes.”
Conservative estimated costs of launching such an operation over an 11-year period would cost at least $1 trillion, according to Reichlin-Melnick.
