President-elect Donald Trump pledge to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history” and teased the possibility of overturning a proposed TikTok ban upon taking office next month.
“On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign a historic slate of executive orders to close our border to illegal aliens and stop the invasion of our country,” Trump said while speaking at Turning Point Action’s AmericaFest conference in Arizona on Sunday (December 22).
“And on that same day, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than that of President Dwight D Eisenhower,” he added.
Trump, 78, made illegal immigration a key talking point during his successful re-election campaign and announced that his former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan would serve as "border czar" for his new administration in a post shared on his Truth Social account on November 10.
Homan's role won't require confirmation by the U.S. Senate -- which was flipped to a Republican majority during the election -- as was the case for other cabinet appointments including ICE director. Homan previously served as acting ICE director before announcing his retirement in 2018 after his nomination was held up by the Senate due to concerns over his record with the agency.
Homan said ICE would carry out Trump's promise of massive deportations in a "humane manner" which wouldn't involve the military during an appearance on FOX News' Sunday Morning Features last month.
“It’s going to be a well-targeted, planned operation conducted by the men of ICE. The men and women of ICE do this daily. They’re good at it,” he said. “When we go out there, we’re going to know who we’re looking for. We most likely know where they’re going to be, and it’s going to be done in a humane manner.”
Trump joined TikTok in June nearly four full years after he issued an executive order that would've banned the app in the United States, citing national security concerns. The president-elect changed his stance earlier this year while arguing that banning TikTok would empower Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, while criticizing a bill signed by President Joe Biden to threaten to ban the app in the U.S. if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, refuses to sell it.
“Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump, wrote on his Truth Social account in April. “He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party.”
Trump launched Truth Social while banished from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, now known as X, after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 6, 2021.