Donald Trump has signalled that his pre-election rhetoric about mass deportations of immigrants wasn’t just bluster by naming a man who helped remove children from their families as his border boss.

Tom Homan, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump’s first term, was announced as being in charge of “all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin” in a late-night Truth Social post this week.

In an interview on Monday, Homan said that there will be no secrets about the policies he implements in a second Trump administration.

“We’re going to prove to the American people we’re concentrating on public safety threats and national security threats first,” he said on CBS.

“We’re going to be very transparent and have a lot of media press conferences, and tell people exactly what we’re doing.”

Homan, who also worked in the Obama administration, has been heavily criticised for his introduction and defence of a policy where migrant children were separated at the border from their parents and allegedly kept in cages.

He said that there are no plans to revive the policy, but defended it as the right decision.

“When we arrest parents here, guess what? We separate them. Illegal aliens should be no different,” he said.

“If an adult is charged with a crime, the child can’t go to jail with them.”

Mass deportation

Trump repeatedly stated on the campaign trail that he planned to undertake the biggest deportations in United States history and implement a closed border if re-elected.

“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not really, we have no choice,” he said in an interview with NBC following his election win.

“When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”

He said he would ask Congress, where he is likely to hold the House and the Senate, to legislate 10,000 more border agents, alongside pay rises for border security workers.

Economic impact

Economic experts have raised serious questions about the economic impact that “the largest deportation operation in American history” would have, with an ageing population struggling to keep up with demand for able-bodied workers.

The US has never deported more than 500,000 people a year, but a new report has found that the impact of a mass deportation of 2.3 million people – the amount of illegal crossing at the border from January 2023 to April 2024 – would result in an economic impact of at least $US315 billion.

It also raised serious questions about how mass deportation would be possible with the entire US prison population totalling 1.9 million people.

Holman, unperturbed, shot down the idea that there would be “concentration camps” to house the millions of immigrants earmarked for deportation.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighbourhoods. It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous,” Homan told CBS News.

“They’ll be targeted arrests. We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find ’em based on numerous, you know, investigative processes.”