One of the most horrific and inhumane policies practiced by Donald TrumpHis first administration was separating migrant families—a sadistic program that caused irreparable damage made worse by the house of trump refusal to pay for mental health services for the people it affected. Since January 2024, years after the policy was suspended due to deafening backlash, some children have had Not yet they were reunited with their parents.

Asked twice during the vice presidential debate whether he and Trump would separate families again during a second term, JD Vance chose not to answer. Meanwhile, Trump did appear the practice of separating families, claiming it is an effective deterrent.

But Tom Homan, who served as Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from January 2017 to June 2018 — and whom Trump had said would join a second administration — apparently has another idea: just deport whole families. Including, presumably, those with citizens among them.

Asked during an interview with 60 minutes if there is a way to “carry out a mass deportation,” which Trump has pledged to do, “without separating families,” Homan told the reporter Cecilia Vega, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.” Discussing a scenario in which an undocumented grandmother is found in a home where the government is targeting someone else for removal, he said he would let a “judge decide” whether that grandmother should also be deported. “If I’m in charge of this,” he added, “my priorities are threats to public safety and threats to national security first and foremost.”

Trump has he swore to “conduct the largest internal deportation operation in American history” starting on “day one.” At a conference earlier this year, Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s family separation program, said of the plan: “You grab the illegal immigrants and then move them to the staging area and there the planes wait for federal law enforcement to then move these illegals home. Deputize the National Guard to conduct immigration enforcement.” (Sunday, Miller declared“America is for Americans and Americans only,” she trotted out historical parallels.)

Homan is not alone in suggesting that a Trump administration could deport US citizens. Last week, the former president himself declared that prosecutor Jack Smith should be thrown out of the country, suggesting that (1) Trump considers taking legal action against him grounds for removal and (2) that he can deport US citizens.

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