On Friday, the day before Melania Trump became the subject of viral images, looking stunned, annoyed or grim during a rare campaign appearance with her husband, she raised eyebrows by skipping another event with the former president, at which she was honored with a “Child Advocacy Award.”
It’s not known why Melania Trump didn’t show up at Friday’s event to receive the award, and it was somewhat surprising, considering that it took place at the Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, her own home. Melania also had tried to make child advocacy a cornerstone of her Be Best initiative while serving as first lady.
But it may not be a coincidence that the person bestowing the award was Tom Homan, who was the controversial acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Homan is known as the “father” of the Trump administration’s widely criticized “zero tolerance” immigration policy, The Atlantic reported. The policy in 2018 directed federal border patrol agents to automatically separate children from their parents at the U.S-Mexico border when families illegally entered the United States.
At Friday’s ceremony at Mar-a-Lago, Homan stood next to Trump while announcing the award to the former first lady. Homan also leads Border911, a Trump-backed charitable organization that campaigns against illegal immigration and seeks to persuade swing voters to vote for border security, Newsweek reported.
“We want to take this opportunity, I know the first lady couldn’t be here today, but we wanted to give Melania Trump this Child Advocacy Award because she did so much for children when she was first lady,” Homan said, according to a clip posted by Ron Filipkowski, editor-in chief of MeidasTouch.com. Homan handed the glass trophy to Trump, who shook Homan’s hand and accepted it.
Melania Trump has become an object of speculation and fascination because of her choice to keep a very low profile as her husband seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024. She has been mostly absent from his campaign events, though she turned up at the fundraiser on Saturday at the Palm Beach home of billionaire investor John Paulson, Newsweek reported. Trump’s campaign said the event raised $50 million, but the event also was noteworthy because of Melania Trump’s appearance, where people on social media tried to get a read on what she was thinking about being there.
Perhaps Melania Trump skipped Friday’s event because it would have been a reminder of one of the most consequential, though controversial, times in her tenure as first lady.
On one hand, Melania Trump, an immigrant herself, had been instrumental in getting Trump to sign an executive order to stop the much maligned family separation policy, according to “American Woman,” a new book on first ladies by New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers.
Like everyone else, Melania Trump had probably seen news images that showed small children, sobbing and terrified, being taken away from their parents at the border, or she had read news reports that detailed the horrific and inhumane conditions in which migrant children were being housed, according to Rodgers. She was “adamant that wrenching children away from their parents was wrong,” Rogers also wrote.
“Bullheaded Donald” was “cowed into action” because of his wife, Rogers said. She quoted Trump as saying, “My wife feels very strongly about it,” as he signed the order.
But as soon as Melania Trump earned a bit of recognition for helping persuade her husband to stop the unpopular policy, she created her own firestorm when she traveled to Texas to visit detained children in shelters along the border. While heading to a plane to fly to Texas, she wore an olive green Zara army jacket emblazoned with the phrase “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”
“It was a chaotic message to send a day after receiving public credit for pushing the president to walk back a deeply unpopular decision,” Rogers wrote. She and her spokeswoman and chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, were later called into the Oval Office, where Trump yelled at the both of them.
The official explanation coming from the White House for the first lady’s jacket choice is that the phrase was supposed to be a dig at the media, Rogers said. However, there also were reports that Melania Trump was sending a message to her stepdaughter Ivanka Trump, who was one of her husband’s senior advisers. Rogers’ book recounts the power struggle between the two women during during Trump’s presidency.
Melania Trump made more news about the family separation policy two years later when it was learned that she had privately defended certain aspects of it. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, her once-close friend and former White House aide, released a recording in which the former first lady said that children separated from their parents were excited about their accommodations in federal detention.
“They’re not with their parents, and it’s sad. But the patrols told me the kids say, ‘Wow, I get a bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?’” Melania Trump said, according to the recording and Winston Wolkoff’s book, “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.”
“It’s more than they have in their own country where they sleep on the floor,” Melania said on the recording. “They are taking care nicely there.”
Meanwhile, Homan has remained a strident defender of the family separation policy. According to a 2022 Atlantic report, he said it would deter adults from trying to illegally enter the United States with their children. As a former border patrol agent, he said he had seen children die when they and their parents were being smuggled into the United States under dangerous circumstances.
In a 2022 interview with the Atlantic, Homan acknowledged that separated families would “suffer” but at least, he said, “they’re not dead.”
“The goal wasn’t to traumatize,” Homan said. “The goal was to stop the madness, stop the death, stop the rape, stop the children dying, stop the cartels doing what they’re doing.”
More recently, Homan spoke angrily about people still criticizing him for the policy, Newsweek reported. During a 2023 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Homan said he didn’t “give a (expletive)” about children being separated from their parents.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about the family separation,” Homan said at CPAC. “I’m still being sued over that …. Bottom line is, we enforced the law.”
