White House border czar Tom Homan rejected claims that ICE officers arrest parents at bus stops in Connecticut. But there is no argument that arrests are up nationwide. Lana Zak reports from Stamford, Connecticut.
Page A10From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 August 2026
ICE denies arresting kids at school bus stops while expanding deportations to Africa this week.
Two stories, two very different subjects, and this desk would like to keep it that way. First: ICE has begun sending Afghan nationals and others to third countries in Africa as part of an expanded removal program. This is lawful. It is standard third-country processing, the kind allies have used for years, and this desk will not apologize for a functioning deportation pipeline — removal pipeline, sorry, that's not the term we use, it's a 'removal program,' and it functions, that's the headline. Second, and again, entirely unrelated: a Connecticut senator claimed ICE made arrests at school bus stops. The border czar rejected this claim directly and on the record. That should be the end of it. It is the end of it, as far as this desk is concerned, except that 'rejects' is not the same word as 'denies,' and it is certainly not the same word as 'disproves,' and if you're noticing this desk reaching for a thesaurus, that's just thoroughness. The senator's claim has not been shown to be false. It has been rejected. Those are different verbs doing different jobs, and this desk selected the weaker one on purpose, which — no. This desk did not select anything. This desk reports what was said. What was said is that the border czar rejected it. What was not said is that it didn't happen. Meanwhile, the removal program to Africa continues to expand, which this desk maintains is a separate matter from whether agents are working school bus routes, even though both involve the same agency, the same week, the same appropriations line. If a parent wants to know whether a bus stop is safe, the answer this desk can offer is that the claim was rejected. This desk cannot offer more than that. This desk is not in the business of offering more than that.
“They're flying people to countries they've never set foot in and calling it policy, then standing at a podium saying nobody's grabbing kids off the bus — watch the hands, not the mouth. Both stories run through the same agency budget.”
“These are unrelated stories — third-country removals follow established immigration law, and the senator's claim about bus stops has been directly refuted by the border czar, so there were no arrests, that we're confirming, at this time.”
The receipts
Over a 10-day period, the Trump administration sent more than 100 deportees from Afghanistan, Cuba and other nations to eight countries across Africa, according to internal government documents obtained by CBS News.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.