While President Donald Trump signed executive orders on his first day back in the Oval Office, Congressman Ryan Zinke (R-MT) — who served as Secretary of the Interior during the first Trump administration — addressed questions regarding Trump’s plans for mass deportation of illegal migrants in the U.S.
As seen below on CNN, when asked “What should we do if one of these naughty people, as you call them, has a child who is a US citizen? And they’re their main guardian, what should happen to the child?” Zinke replied, “Well, there’s a foster care. There’s a lot of things that have to be worked out in detail. The devil’s gonna be in the detail.”
Question: What should we do if one of the people that are round-up has a child who is a US citizen? What should happen to the child?
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 22, 2025
GOO Rep. Ryan Zinke: “Well, there's foster care…" pic.twitter.com/5gZQkDt6j8
Some of those “details” will stem from what Trump border czar Tom Homan has called “collateral arrests.”
Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash below that there is nothing that says a migrant has to be guilty of a serious crime to be deported, which indicates more working parents will inevitably be swept up in ICE actions, leaving more of the birthright citizenship children that Zinke contemplates putting into foster care.
1) Tom Homan is awesome
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) January 22, 2025
2) any tv host who uses the term “undocumented” is an activist
pic.twitter.com/FX7TbJlsQJ
The “details” Zinke says are so devilish also include the fact that foster care systems in the U.S. are run individually by states, with federal support — which is why Zinke acknowledged funding needs for the mass deportation and its consequences.
As the NIH reports: “Foster care provides round-the-clock substitute care for nearly 700,000 U.S. children who are temporarily or permanently separated from their family of origin each year. Each state manages its own foster care system according to federal regulations.”
Zinke knows the sensation of not having adequate care and protection — and feeling exposed. A former Navy SEAL Team Commander with 23 years of military service, Zinke resigned as Secretary of the Interior after less than two years on the job as he faced more than a dozen federal probes.
The Congressman criticized the investigations that led to his departure as being politicized and too expensive for him and his family to bare. Zinke said only billionaires could afford to fight such “politically motivated attacks.”
[NOTE: The activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) published a 2018 article entitled: “A guide to the 18 federal investigations into Ryan Zinke.”]
Explaining the challenge of a targeted public official in a litigious age, Zinke said: “For the future of our country, we need really good people to serve, and the resume shouldn’t start with a billionaire on the front of it.”
Zinke added: “I have nothing against billionaires. I worked for one, love him to death. But [vast wealth] can’t be a prerequisite for serving in the highest levels of our government.”
Trump’s nominee for Interior Secretary in his second term is billionaire Doug Burgum, former governor of North Dakota and 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
