Trump’s Border Czar Vows to Resurrect One of His Worst Policies

Donald Trump’s “border czar” is pledging to bring back the practice of family detention for undocumented immigrants.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Tom Homan, who oversaw the family separation policy as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first term, said that the next Trump administration will be holding families in detention centers and won’t hesitate to deport undocumented parents with U.S.-born children.

“Here’s the issue,” Homan told the Post. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”

“We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” Homan added. “How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”

In the first Trump term, ICE used facilities known as “residential centers,” which contained 3,000 beds similar to dormitories. Immigration activists and doctors criticized them as creating a harmful environment for children. This time around, with Trump’s plan to increase deportations on a massive scale, ICE plans to house immigrant families with “soft-sided” tent structures, Homan said.

President Biden ended the family detention policy in 2021, and the federal judge who oversees immigration detention has put a 20-day limit on how long children can be held at an immigration facility. Trump has repeatedly promised an overhaul of Biden’s immigration policies, pledging mass deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Trump is already getting pushback on his deportation plans, which is probably a contributing factor as to why Homan said he hasn’t committed to a target number of deportations.

“I’ll be setting myself up for disappointment,” Homan said, telling the Post that he doesn’t know how much resources he’ll have.

Billionaire immigrant Elon Musk and his supporters are beefing over how to grow Silicon Valley.

“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk wrote on X on Wednesday morning, in response to Replit CEO Amjad Masad, suggesting that the industry needs to look outside of the United States for its engineers.

“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk continued in another post. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”

This ruffled the feathers of many MAGA fans on the right who are anti-immigration.

“There are over 330 million people in America. Surely, there must be enough among them to build your ultimate team?” said one X user in a viral reply to Musk. “Why would you deny real Americans that opportunity by bringing foreigners here?”

That “real Americans” quip underscores some of the tension between Musk, himself an immigrant from South Africa, and the MAGA base. Musk thinks it necessary to draw an influx of international engineering talent while many of those who voted for Trump (and arguably Musk by proxy) are against that on principle. The end result of this tension is yet to be seen.

“It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE. If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE,” Musk reiterated in another post. “End of story.”

In the least surprising revelation ever, Donald Trump’s adviser Corey Lewandowski said the president-elect’s dream of annexing Greenland was all to boost his own ego—and acted like that was a good enough reason.

During an interview on Newsmax Monday, Lewandowski suggested that Trump’s recent calls to have the U.S. claim the Panama Canal and Greenland were purposefully outrageous declarations, and just part of the tactical brilliance one could expect from his bold America First agenda.

“So what is Donald Trump talking about? He’s talking about maybe Greenland from a historic perspective coming as part of the United States, taking back the Panama Canal so that China doesn’t have its influence there,” Lewandowski said.

“This is a president who is making out-of-the-box announcements to put the world on notice that once again the United States is the dominant world superpower, and we have a president who understands what that means, and is not going to kowtow to our foreign friends, or our foreign adversaries,” Lewandowski added.

Technically, Lewandowski is right. A world superpower can easily keep both allies and enemies on their toes if they continually make a series of absurd statements on the world stage.

When Newsmax’s Emma Rechenberg gently reminded Lewandowski that Greenland was a semiautonomous state, owned by Denmark, he didn’t seem the least bit dissuaded.

“Why would [Trump] want this?” Rechenberg asked.

“Well, look, Donald Trump is a real estate master, and he understands the historic and the strategic, more importantly, significance of Greenland,” Lewandowski replied, but didn’t appear to know what exactly made it so significant.

“So it’s not because of its beautiful temperatures. We know that’s not the case,” Lewandowski continued. “There is a very important strategic value to the United States having control of this.”

But Lewandowski wasn’t done. “And by the way, we have not expanded our country in 70 years. So, look, Donald Trump is, again, thinking outside the box. How do we have a lasting impact on the world stage? What does his legacy look like?”

Pretty much stating the obvious, Lewandowski explained that the megalomaniacal Trump was hoping to acquire Greenland so he would look cool. A big acquisition like that might distract from any calamities stateside, including his planned massive violent deportations and tariffs set to tank the economy.

Donald Trump has an outstanding tax evasion case in Panama, the same country he’s just publicly accused of financial wrongdoing, according to Newsweek.

Trump railed against Panama’s commerce policies while speaking at the Turning Point USA conference in Arizona on Sunday, threatening to take over the Panama Canal.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair. Especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama, I say very foolishly, by the United States,” the president-elect told the conference crowd. “If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question.”

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, himself a conservative, rebuked Trump.

“As president, I want to express clearly that every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zone belongs to Panama, and will continue to do so,” he said in a video statement. “The sovereignty and independence of our country are not negotiable.”

Every analysis of this new Trump threat should come with a reminder: In 2019, the owners of a Panama City hotel tower that was previously managed and operated under the Trump brand, accused Trump Panama Hotel Management LLC and Trump International Hotels Management LLC, of not paying the required 12.5 percent taxes to the Panamanian government. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, the companies simply kept the money, “intentionally evading taxes” and leaving the new owner liable for millions.

A tax audit of the hotels submitted as evidence found massive inconsistencies. The case is still pending in New York District Court.

President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 men on federal death row, before Donald Trump could return to office and carry out his planned “execution spree.”

“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said in a statement. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

The prisoners on death row will now serve life in prison instead. Biden also noted that he wouldn’t commute the sentences of those charged with hate crimes or terrorism. Dylan Roof, who killed nine Black people at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston in 2015, Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, will each remain on death row. 

Biden’s announcement has already infuriated the right, who see it as some great injustice that men who were set to be executed will instead be spending the rest of their lives in a cage.

“It’s horrifying that Pres. Biden has granted clemency to some of our nation’s most monstrous killers,” Senator John Kennedy wrote on X. “Their victims deserve better, and justice demands more.”

“I think it’s yet another abuse of the pardon power,” said Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy. “He wiped the slate clean … and he did it in a way that is a categorical change of the law.” 

“It wasn’t BAD ENOUGH Joe Biden let in violent criminals and terrorists across our border ON PURPOSE. Now, he’s commuting the sentences of 37 of America’s OWN most dangerous criminals,” chimed Speaker Mike Johnson on X. “This is a slap in the face to the families who have suffered immeasurably at the hands of these animals.”