Donald Trump’s border commissioner speaks out about mass deportations

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Lerato Khumalo

Trump’s border representative Tom Homan comments on reports of mass deportations. The US President-elect presents his own currency. All developments in the news blog.

6:33 a.m.: The future head of US border security has rejected reports of raids against migrants living in the US illegally as early as next week. The Wall Street Journal and later the New York Times reported that the first raids were planned soon after President Donald Trump took office on Monday, initially in Chicago.

Tom Homan, who is supposed to head the ICE immigration agency under Trump, denied raids in Chicago in an interview with the Washington Post. He told Tom Homan that nothing had been decided yet. “We are looking at this indiscretion and will then make a decision on this basis,” he told the newspaper. “It’s unfortunate because anyone who breaches security agency operations exposes their employees to greater risks.”

However, he himself confirmed that the immigration authorities were likely to take action almost immediately after the change of power in the USA. ICE will use arrests “from day one” to address threats to public and national security, Homan told the newspaper. “We will arrest people all over the country, unhindered by any policies of previous administrations. Why exactly Chicago was mentioned, I don’t know.” It’s not just individual parts of the city that are being combed. “We have a targeted plan to enforce this.”

5 a.m.: The short video platform TikTok is no longer available in the US. According to media reports, the main cloud computing service provider for TikTok, Oracle, had previously instructed its employees to switch off the servers on which the US TikTok data is hosted on Saturday at 9 p.m. local time (Sunday at 3 a.m. CET). On Sunday morning German time CET, TikTok was no longer available in the USA. Apple and Google removed the app from their offerings. Read more about this here.

1:55 a.m.: US President-elect Donald Trump could end dismissal protection for around 50,000 US federal civil servants via executive order on the first day of his second term in office. This is reported by people familiar with the discussions of the Trump transition team. The dismissed civil servants should then be replaced as quickly as possible by hand-picked, loyal employees. In doing so, Trump wants to dismantle what he and his supporters call the “deep state,” two of the unnamed people told the Reuters news agency.

The Trump administration will also rush to fill thousands of political appointments across the government with loyalists. Trump allies blame disloyal bureaucrats for stalling or thwarting initiatives at the Justice Department, Education Department and other agencies during Trump’s first term.

12:10 a.m.: According to a document, the German ambassador to the USA fears fundamental changes to the country’s political order from the future US President Donald Trump and his government. Trump’s agenda means a “maximum concentration of power with the president at the expense of Congress and the states,” according to a confidential analysis for the federal government available to Reuters. The paper is signed by Ambassador Andreas Michaelis and dated January 14th.

Trump is pursuing an agenda of “maximum disruption,” the paper says. Basic democratic principles and the US system of separation of powers (checks and balances) would be largely undermined. The legislature, law enforcement and media would be robbed of their independence and politically abused. Large technology companies (Big Tech) were given “co-governance.” Trump and his advisor Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the short message platform X, have already taken action against critics and unpopular media companies. Read more about it here.