Trump prioritizes border by selecting Tom Homan as Border Czar
DALLAS - President-elect Donald Trump is organizing his cabinet, and he’s starting with a priority on the border.
Less than a week after winning another four years in the White House, Trump selected former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan as his Border Czar.
"I’ve been yelling and screaming about it, telling them what they need to do to fix it. So, when the president asked me would you come back and fix it, of course I have to. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t," Homan said in an interview on FOX & Friends.
During his campaign, Trump made bold promises, saying on day one he would start the largest deportation program in United States history.
Trump also promised to end birthright citizenship by way of an executive order, something he promoted in his previous term.
"Going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship," he said.
But constitutional lawyer David Coale believes that would be unconstitutional.
"We have birthright citizenship in this country because one of the reasons for the Civil War was back in the 1850s the Supreme Court decided a case called Dred Scott and held that a child of slaves cannot be a citizen of the United States," Coale said.
Dred Scott was ultimately overturned when Congress passed the 13th and 14th Amendments.
Coale said Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship would thus violate the constitution and would "immediately be blocked by the courts."
"Mr. Trump’s free to advocate for a change in this, a constitutional provision if he wants to. But there’s a way you do that. We’ve done it many times in our nation’s history, and it requires a lot of work and a lot of consensus. You can’t cut shortcuts when it comes to things that are expressly in the constitution," he said.
When it comes to mass deportation, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters Trump would prioritize criminals who are in the country illegally.
Trump's mass deportation plan easier said than done, immigration lawyer says
President-elect Donald Trump says on the first day of his presidency he will deport millions who are in the country illegally. FOX 4 talked to an immigration lawyer about the plan.
That is something President Joe Biden and other presidents have done. From March 2023 to March 2024, more than 300,000 people have had expedited removal from the U.S.
It’s unclear if the federal government has the manpower to go even further, for example, with large-scale roundups at worksites. It’s also not clear how the government would verify each individual’s status.
But the deportation plan is something Homan told FOX News the Trump administration will carry out.
"I think the call is clear. I got to go back and help because every morning I get up. Every morning I’m pissed off about what this administration did to a more secure border in my lifetime. So, I’m going to go back and do what I can to fix it," he said.
Abbott believes it will take Trump time to do mass deportations.
He said Operation Lone Star will continue to be a stopgap until that happens.