Washington, D.C. - In response to Tom Homan’s new appointment as ‘Border Czar’ for the incoming Trump administration, Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director of Detention Watch Network offered the following statement:
“Tom Homan has a long record of executing draconian immigration enforcement, including promoting the horrific family separation policy. From his time as Acting Director of ICE under the previous administration to his work most recently at the Heritage Foundation laying the groundwork for a mass deportation agenda, Homan has made clear his disdain for immigrants and his intention to aggressively target people, including based on what they look like, the language they speak, and where they work, embedding fear into communities nation-wide.
“We expect Homan to lead swift and cruel enforcement tactics, like mass raids and detention, designed to create a media spectacle that will dehumanize and criminalize our immigrant family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors while also stripping away the already limited protections people have to live and work in the United States without fear of being targeted, detained, and exiled from their loved ones.
“Homan has been a long time proponent of the problematic narrative which dangerously equates people moving to the U.S. with national security and public safety concerns – foundational to right-wing ideologies that have caused irreversible harm to immigrants, disproportionately targeting Black and brown people while scapegoating them for the failures of government to respond to the needs of struggling Americans.
“Bottomline: with Homan at the helm, we anticipate mass raids, immigration detention expansion, and family separations that will devastate communities across the country.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.