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Migrant families worry over possible family separations if Trump wins | 60 Minutes
Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to implement mass deportation if he’s reelected has ignited fears of family separations.
Monica Camacho Perez and her family have lived and worked in the United States since coming illegally from Mexico more than 20 years ago. Camacho Perez teaches English as a second language to immigrant adults, and she also works in the public high schools. Her family lives in Baltimore.
“We are a normal family, like anybody else,” she said. “We go to church. We work every day. We pay taxes,” she said.
She’s among the more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children who are protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA.
“I’m the only one right now that’s, like, protected, while my parents are not, my brothers are not,” she said. “My brothers have children that are born here. So if they were to get deported, what will happen to their kids?”
Would families be separated if Trump’s reelected?
When asked whether there was a way to carry out mass deportations without separating families, Tom Homan, who led immigration enforcement during the first year-and-a-half of the Trump administration, said, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”
Like Camacho Perez’s nieces and nephews, more than four million U.S.-born children live with an undocumented parent.
60 Minutes
Asked why children should have to leave the country where they were born and raised, Homan said, “Because their parent absolutely entered the country illegally, had a child knowing he was in the country illegally. So he created that crisis.”
During Homan’s time leading ICE – in what became one of the most controversial policies of the Trump administration – at least 5,000 migrant children were forcibly separated from their parents when their parents were arrested at the border and prosecuted for crossing into the U.S. illegally.
Asked about published accounts saying that family separation at the border was his idea, Homan replied: “Not true. I didn’t write the memorandum to separate families. I signed the memo. Why’d I sign the memo? I was hoping to save lives. While you and I are talking right now, a child’s going to die in the border. . . . So we thought, ‘so maybe if we prosecute people, they’ll stop coming.'”
Trump has said Homan would be joining him in the new administration if he wins a second term. Asked if this family separation policy would be re-instituted then, Homan said, “I don’t know of any formal policy where they’re talking about family separations.”
60 Minutes
Asked whether it should be on the table, he replied, “It needs to be considered, absolutely.”
How that would happen given a court settlement reached late last year between the federal government and the American Civil Liberties Union is unclear. Under the settlement, the federal government is barred from separating migrant families at the border for the next eight years if the sole purpose is to prosecute the parents for entering the U.S. illegally.
“I can’t imagine living here without them.”
Back in Baltimore, Camacho Perez said she has given a lot of thought to what she would do if her parents were deported. Even though Baltimore is where she grew up, and she now owns her own home there, she thinks she would go back to Mexico with her parents if they were deported.
“They’re also part of my American dream,” she said. “And I can’t imagine living here without them.”
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Puerto Rico comments from speaker at Trump rally draw criticism while Harris’ plan for the island gets Bad Bunny endorsement
With nine days until Election Day, Puerto Rico has been thrust into the spotlight by both campaigns. Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a plan to assist the island — leading to an endorsement from Bad Bunny — while Puerto Rico was referred to as “a floating island of garbage” by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who spoke at a rally for former President Donald Trump in New York City.
In an effort to court Puerto Rican voters in the U.S. mainland, Harris on Sunday posted a video on her social media platforms pledging to create a Puerto Rican task force to create jobs, cut red tape to ensure disaster recovery funds are used quickly and efficiently and work with leaders across the island to ensure Puerto Ricans have access to reliable and affordable electricity.
Rapper and singer Bad Bunny, a global superstar from Puerto Rico, shared the vice president’s video on his Instagram account with his 45 million followers and later posted a clipped portion of the video in which Harris slammed Trump for his response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017.
“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” Harris said in the video. “He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes, and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”
In 2017, Trump visited the island to survey damage after Hurricane Maria struck as a major Category 4 storm. While visiting with survivors, the former president at one point threw paper towels into the crowd when distributing supplies, a move that was criticized as callous amid widespread frustration over the federal response to the hurricane that left much of the island without power and food.
A source close to Bad Bunny confirmed to CBS News that the Instagram post represents an endorsement of the vice president, breaking from Bad Bunny’s longstanding tradition to not weigh in on national politics. It’s a coveted endorsement with weight that both political parties have long hoped to achieve to strengthen inroads with Latino voters, given Bad Bunny’s global popularity.
Moments before Bad Bunny’s endorsement, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe targeted Puerto Rico during a set of disparaging jokes while speaking at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden.
“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” Hinchcliffe said. “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
Trump senior advisor Danielle Alvarez told CBS News, “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign” adding that the jokes were not reviewed or pre-approved.
Hinchcliffe’s remarks, which also included offensive jokes about Black people and Latinos, were met with swift backlash, with several celebrities coming out in defense of Puerto Rico, Latinos in the U.S. and voicing their support for Harris’ plan for the island. Among those who weighed in were Jennifer Lopez, Ariana DeBose and Ricky Martin. Martin, with over 18 million followers, took to Instagram and posted, “Puerto Rico, this is what they think of us, vote for Kamala Harris.”
Several Democratic and Republican politicians were also among those to denounce Hinchcliffe’s swing at Puerto Ricans, who make up a crucial voting group.
Harris’ running mate Gov. Tim Walz said during a livestream with Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “There are hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans across battleground states. They need to vote.”
Ocasio-Cortez agreed with Walz and directed her comments toward Puerto Ricans in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania. “If you’re in Reading, if you’re in Philly, look at that trash,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to Hinchcliffe’s joke. “What is trash is people actually just thinking of other human beings that way.”
Pennsylvania is home to over 579,000 eligible Latino voters with roughly 50% residing within the “222 Corridor” — a stretch of small cities west and north of Philadelphia including Reading, Allentown and Bethlehem.
With Trump winning the Keystone State in 2016 by 44,000 votes and Biden taking it by 81,000 in 2020, slim margins are again expected to determine the outcome of the presidential election.
Harris on Sunday spoke directly to Latino voters while visiting a local Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia. “When I was in the Senate, knowing Puerto Rico doesn’t have a senator, I always felt a need and an obligation to do what I could as a senator to make sure that Puerto Rico’s needs were met,” Harris said.
Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Muñoz said Sunday in a statement, “A reminder: Pennsylvania is home to more than 1 million Latinos who are primarily of Puerto Rican backgrounds, and today, Vice President Harris campaigned in the heart of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community talking not just about her vision for the island, but how she will lower costs and create opportunity in their communities on the mainland.”
On Tuesday, Trump is expected to campaign in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Latinos make up 54% of the population, the majority being of Puerto Rican descent.
Republican Florida Senator Rick Scott, an ally of Trump’s, also denounced Hinchcliffe’s comments.
“This joke bombed for a reason. It’s not funny and it’s not true,” Scott said. “Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans! I’ve been to the island many times. It’s a beautiful place. Everyone should visit! I will always do whatever I can to help any Puerto Rican in Florida or on the island.”
Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar called the comments “racist.”
The island’s Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican running for governor of the island, said the comments were “despicable, inappropriate and disgusting.”
and
contributed to this report.
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