US migrant rights advocates raise alarm over Trump appointments
Al Jazeera
Appointments of Stephen Miller and Tom Homan point to President-elect Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, experts say.
As US President-elect Donald Trump moves to fill key cabinet positions in his incoming administration, experts and rights groups in the United States have said his selections so far point towards a hardline approach to immigration.
Trump announced on Monday that Tom Homan – a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director – will serve as his “border czar”, while it was also reported that longtime adviser Stephen Miller will act as his deputy chief of staff for policy.
Homan and Miller were the architects of some of Trump’s most divisive immigration policies during his first term in office, including the separation of migrant and asylum-seeker families seeking protection at the US-Mexico border and the so-called Muslim ban.
With the Republican set to take office in January on a promise to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history”, advocates say the new appointments signal that Trump intends to try to follow through on that election campaign pledge.
“They’ve learned some things since the last time they were in power,” immigration lawyer Greg Siskind said of Miller and Homan.
