The Biden campaign is sounding alarms about deportations and detention camps during a possible second term for former President Trump, whose former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, Thomas Homan, is expected to speak at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night.
“Nothing spells unity or American values like putting the architect of family separation, Tom Homan, on in primetime during the Republican National Convention. Americans will never shake the cruel and unforgivable images of mothers being ripped away from their children, and who is to blame: Donald Trump,” Maca Casado, the Biden-Harris team’s Hispanic media director, said in a statement.
Homan, who served as acting director of ICE in 2017 and 2018, oversaw parts of the Trump administration’s controversial family separation policy. He’s a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and is listed as a contributor to the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” policy blueprint.
Homan said last year that he was “sick and tired hearing about the family separation,” arguing that “we enforced the law.”
He’s expected to speak to the convention crowd ahead of the highly anticipated speech from Trump’s newly named running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).
Immigration has been a hot topic at the quadrennial GOP gathering.
Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake launched chants of “build the wall” — while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) stoked boos when he claimed that “Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.”
The Biden campaign said Homan’s appearance Wednesday night will help “cast a spotlight on [Trump’s] cruel legacy” on immigration and suggested that the former president will “go further” if he gets another four years in the Oval Office, “using the National Guard to round up and deport immigrants, stand up massive detention camps, and reinstating his cruel and anti-American Muslim ban.”
“Neither Trump nor Tom Homan gives a damn about fixing the immigration system Trump himself broke, but because Trump thinks it’s good politics to pick on the most vulnerable,” Casado said.