America's Talking - Homan: Deportation Plan to Prioritize National Security Threats, Violent Criminals

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump’s new border czar Tom Homan is putting together an extensive deportation plan for when he hits the ground running after they are both sworn into office in January. Homan spoke to The Center Square about his priorities, illustrating a marked difference from President Joe Biden’s border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, who repeatedly said the border was secure and she didn’t need to go to there. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the greatest number of illegal border crossers, roughly 14 million, were reported in U.S. history, The Center Square reported. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAleague, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, we are recording this early this week on Tuesday, November 26th. President-elect Donald Trump continues his transition, filling cabinet seats and preparing for his inauguration in January. His new boarders are, Tom Homan,

gave the Center Square in an exclusive interview this, week, where he described the incoming Trump administration's plan to deport an untold number of foreign nationals in the U.S. illegally, prioritizing those who pose the greatest threat to national security and personal safety. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief of the Center Square. Happy Thanksgiving week, Casey. Happy Thanksgiving, Dan. What do you got planned this week? We are driving out east to be with family on Thanksgiving. I'll be in Ohio for the holiday. How about you? I'll be staying in D.C. for Thanksgiving, but we're going to, of course, meet up with friends and all that and do the Thanksgiving thing. It's going to be great.

Well, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving holiday with your family. Casey, so Tom Holman, the President of all that Trump's New Boards are. He talked exclusively with the Center Square this week where he outlined his plan to prioritize deporting violent criminal of foreign nationals who are in the country illegally. There's been all kinds of questions about the President Alex deportation plan. Why don't you get us started on it? Yeah, I mean, and shout out to Bethany Blankley for getting this great interview. I encourage everyone to read it at thecentersquare.com. It's on our homepage. It's a very long, you know, it's a long story, but it's got a lot of good details, some things that, you know, the media is just not reporting on. And so, you know, we learned from

Holman in this interview what kind of some of the process, and I believe there's going to be more stories to come on this. But really, you know, how is this going to look? I mean, we can talk about mass deportation as the president has promised. And of course, when he selected Homan to be in his cabinet, it was a signal to the ICE, to Border Patrol, to America, that he was taking deportation and the immigration issue very seriously because Holman is about as hawkish as you can get on this issue. He is making the case in the media. He's saying, you know, unapologetic about deportation. There's this famous clip

that's gone viral recently where, you know, someone in the media asks him, well, is there a way to avoid family separation in deportation? And he says, of course, the families can be deported together. You know, he's got that kind of Trump edge, that unapologetic, this is what we're doing and this is what the American people want. And Trump has the mandate right now. He won the popular vote. Big win in the electoral college and he's using it. So as far as the details, I think, you know, one thing that's, you know, worth pointing out is the plan is going to prioritize deporting, you know, national security threats and violent criminals.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of violent criminals that have been led into the country from, you know, country south of our border in particular that just come in and kind of get a second chance at life or at a second chance at a life of crime, depending on who it is. And so that's a big problem. As far as the national security threat, Stan, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast and written about it at thecentersquare.com, but I think it's really been underreported on that there have been hundreds of people, hundreds and hundreds of people come across both the southern border and the northern border who are on the terror watch list or connect, which basically means they have some kind of ties that are just very suspicious.

You know, maybe their brother is identified as a terrorist in Syria or something like that, where they're connected to terrorists enough to make the terror watch list. It makes them very, you know, potentially dangerous, makes them, of course, means they could be part of a terror network or a sleeper cell or something like that. And, but we know that there's hundreds of people that come into the country who are on that list.

And so that's something that, you know, I think all of people, people will make sense to prioritize. But with that being said, it's not going to stop there. Homan made clear that, you know, there are millions of illegal immigrants and he's going to try to systematically start deporting all of them for most of them. And Trump has said, too, he plans to declare the Bore of Crisis a national emergency, which would allow him to call up the military to aid with those deportation efforts. Let's just quickly transition, Casey.

another thing that Trump has said he's going to do is impose tariffs on goods that are imported into the country. There's some new news on that this week as well. Yeah, that's right. Trump announced basically that's released a statement. Who knows how much he's communicating with these countries. But he released a statement saying that he's on day one, January 20th, he's going to basically enforce, announce, create an act, a 25% tariff, 25%, is very large, on all products coming into the United States from Canada and Mexico until they do, you know, what's needed to solve the border crisis that's allowing all the fentanyl

and the millions of migrants to come into the country. So, of course, you know, I wonder if this is, it should hear what you think. I think this could just be a great negotiating tactic that we may never actually see tariffs enforced because we can easily see on, you know, January 22nd, Trump says, I've been in talks with Canada and Mexico. They've agreed to, you know, we're going to reinstate remain in Mexico. They're putting their own militaries on the border. And because of their, you know, we basically solved the border crisis and there's going to be no tariffs now, right? He's kind of setting himself up to take this policy back as a sign that he's declared victory on the issue. But if this goes through, it will be a huge, to have huge impact on

Americans are on the North American economy. I think there's no doubt that this is a negotiating negotiation tactic by President elect Trump. He is trying to force foreign countries hands. During his first term, he accused like NATO countries of not properly funding their security. And he threatened NATO countries with withholding funding until they ponied up what they promised to pay.

So I think this tariffs thing is all part of that as well. One final thing, Casey, before we have to wrap, special counsel, Jack Smith on Monday, requested to dismiss his federal election interference case against President elect Trump. The court agreed to do that, but without prejudice, meaning he could bring it back after the first Trump term. Yeah, that's really a theme of some of these legal charges and investigations that the DOJ has a policy, a longstanding policy.

of not prosecuting sitting presidents. And so, you know, I think it's going to take a lot of, I think we're probably seeing the last of these dismissed cases because to prosecute someone who's, you know, 85 years old, was reelected with a popular vote and who can't run for office again. I think it'll have to seem vindictive and be a bad look for the FBI and the DOJ. So I think these cases are probably done unless Trump does something. think I'm the ordinary witch, you know. He does tell me to do that.

Well, thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with all of these stories and more at thecentersquare.com.