WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump has vowed to step up his crackdown on immigration after returning to the White House and has left the door open to reintroduce his most controversial policy – family separation at the US-Mexico border – but key allies who have gained can The new Trump administration is just as cautious as immigration enforcers.
Five former Trump officials and conservative allies told Reuters that while Trump is considering tougher anti-immigrant measures, they are concerned about implementing a new version of the 2018 “zero tolerance” policy that closed the border along the Southwest border. But thousands of children were separated from their parents.
He said he was concerned about a repeat of the broad public response generated by the original policy.
Tom Homan, a former Trump immigration official who may join another administration, said “zero-tolerance family separation has torn the country apart.” “Instead of dealing with all the chaos that comes with that, the best way to do that is to put them together in a residential center and have their hearings together.”
Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination and has made border security a major theme of his campaign. He is pledging to restore radical policies and implement new policies that will further curb both legal and illegal immigration during his 2017-2021 presidency.
Trump spoke about the effectiveness of family separation during a CNN town hall in May and refused to reinstate them. He defended it again in an interview with Spanish-language television channel Univision that aired on November 9.
“It stopped people from coming by the thousands because when they hear ‘family separation,’ they say, ‘Well, we shouldn’t go.’ And they didn’t go,” he said.
Trump’s hard-line position has been seized upon by the re-election campaign of Democratic President Joe Biden, who says he is an example of the “extreme” policies Republicans would pursue if he returned to the White House.
He told Reuters that civil rights activists were concerned by Trump’s comments and were prepared to return to court to fight any new version of the policy.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Lots of ways to do it’
The question of how to handle the thousands of families illegally crossing the Southwest border has been a constant concern of Republican and Democratic administrations. Since taking office, Biden has battled record numbers of immigrants crossing the border illegally, including a recent surge in families.
The Trump administration launched its “zero tolerance” policy in April 2018 as a way to discourage illegal border crossings, including by families. Under the policy, the parents were charged with immigration offenses and sent to prison, while the children were placed in shelters.
Trump ended it in June 2018 amid protests and instead said he would try to detain families together. But family detention is limited to 20 days under a 2015 court order, usually not enough time to process a family’s asylum claims and potentially deport them.
While some opinion polls show voters in battleground states are backing Trump over Biden on immigration issues, Biden’s campaign is reminding them of Trump’s isolationist policy, which most Americans, including some Republicans, disagree with. was unpleasant in between.
“Trump has been very open about the extreme, inhumane and fundamentally un-American policies he is implementing,” Biden campaign manager Julie Rodriguez said in a press call on Nov. 18 before Trump’s border visit.
Rodriguez’s actions, highlighted by Trump, included family separation, calling it a “brutal policy of ripping children from the arms of their mothers and fathers.”
Homan said he wasn’t sure what he would do if Trump asked him to revive family separation.
“I would suggest there are several ways to do this,” he said. “I’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“More safeguards will be needed to ensure these families are quickly reunited,” Homan said.
“All options need to be on the table,” Chad Wolf, Trump’s former acting homeland chief and current executive director of the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-affiliated think tank, said when asked about reconsidering family separations.
But Wolff said the American public clearly does not support it and that other actions could achieve the same goal.
Workers are ready for legal fight
If Trump implements the family separation policy, he will face legal challenges. Days after “zero tolerance” ended in 2018, a federal judge ordered families to be reunited in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The effort is still ongoing due to lack of record-keeping.
Another hurdle for Trump could be a compromise agreement signed by the Biden administration that would bar similar segregation for eight years.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said the group would go to court to enforce the ban if segregation resumes.
“We take the recent conversation very seriously that it is still on the table and we will be ready if it happens again,” he said.
Mark Morgan, the top border official under Trump, said he does not believe the new Trump administration will implement the same family separation policy as the first.
Morgan — like Homan, Wolf and others — calls Trump’s 2019 “stay in Mexico” policy a better option. That program forced some non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico for their U.S. cases to be resolved and reduced border apprehensions, including for families.
Biden moved to end “stay in Mexico” but Trump has promised to bring it back if re-elected.
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