Tom Homan U-Turn on Deporting US Citizens

President-elect Donald Trump's appointed "border czar" has seemingly made a U-turn from his previous comments about deporting U.S. citizens.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration, is known for defending the policy of separating families at the border and is set to oversee the mass deportations that the president-elect pledged during his campaign.

On Tuesday, Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Homan: "Are you going to deport doctors? They're saying that there's going to be migrant doctors in the middle of surgery, and ICE is just going to be dragging them out in their scrubs. Have you heard of that happening?"

Homan said: "I have never heard of that happening. I heard the other day that we're going to deport U.S. citizens, too. I heard that one."

In an earlier interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Homan similarly dismissed claims that he would deport U.S. citizens. However, his responses to the Fox News hosts differed in tone from comments he made in a recent 60 Minutes interview. In October, correspondent Cecilia Vega asked Homan, "Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?"

"Of course there is," Homan said. "Families can be deported together."

Later in the interview, Vega asked: "Why should a child who is an American citizen have to pack up and move to a country that they don't know?"

Homan said: "Because their parent absolutely entered the country illegally, had a child knowing he was in the country illegally. So he created that crisis."

Thomas Homan in East Point, Georgia, on April 26, 2018. Homan, who has suggested that the U.S.-born children of undocumented migrants may face deportation, has seemingly dismissed the idea that U.S. citizens will be deported. John Bazemore/Associated Press

According to the Pew Research Center, "Unauthorized immigrants live in 6.3 million households," 70 percent of which are "mixed status"—meaning U.S. citizens and immigrants residing in the country legally also live there.

Pew found that in only 5 percent of mixed-status households, unauthorized immigrants lived with people who were not family, suggesting that most undocumented migrants lived with a family member who is a U.S. citizen or legal resident.

In 2022, 4.4 million U.S.-born children lived with an unauthorized immigrant parent, Pew reported.

Migrants from Cuba and Venezuela lining up at a check point in Tijuana, Mexico, on November 5 as they made their way across the border for their appointments to legally apply for asylum in the... Gregory Bull/Associated Press

On November 11, Hannity asked Homan whether he would deport U.S. citizens. "No. Exactly not," Homan said, adding, "President Trump has made it clear: We will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first, and that's where the focus will be."

Newsweek contacted the Trump transition team for comment by email.

On the campaign trail, Trump also pledged to end birthright citizenship for children of parents living in the U.S. illegally.

In May 2023, @TrumpWarRoom, an official campaign account on X, formerly Twitter, posted a video of "President Trump's plan to discourage illegal immigration by ENDING automatic citizenship for the children of illegal aliens."

In the video, Trump said: "The United States is among the only countries in the world that says that even if neither parent is a citizen or even lawfully in the country, their future children are automatic citizens the moment the parents trespass onto our soil."

"I will sign an executive order," he continued, adding, "The future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship."

The American Civil Liberties Union called the pledge "an attempt to tear down one of the core constitutional protections that has been a key part of our country."

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