Homan, the former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said on “Fox & Friends" that the workplace raids would help combat labor and sex trafficking.
“Where do we find most victims of sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking? At worksites,” Homan told Steve Doocy.
But advocates say that approach is unlikely to achieve that aim.
“He’s conflating the traffickers with the people being trafficked,” said Heidi Altman, director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center.
“Tom Homan is skilled at using public safety rhetoric to justify vicious tactics that tear families apart.”
Homan, an early proponent of the “zero tolerance” policy that separated more than 4,000 children from their parents in the first Trump administration, said he will prioritize “public safety threats and national security threats” for deportation as border czar.
But Homan said foreign nationals with orders of deportation “became a fugitive,” suggesting immigrants without criminal records but with final orders of deportation would be high on the list of deportation priorities.
The Hill's Rafael Bernal has more here.