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 A12From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 31 August 2026
Border czar denies ICE arrests kids at school bus stops, confirms agency now deports people to Africa.
As it ran on the front
Let's be precise about what was actually said, because precision matters here. A senator from Connecticut claimed that ICE agents made arrests at school bus stops. The border czar rejected that claim directly, on the record, and that should be the end of it — there is no operational policy directing agents to detain individuals at children's bus stops, full stop.
What people are conflating, and I want to be fair to the confusion, is that separately, ICE has expanded what's called third-country removal — sending Afghans and other nationals to African countries when their countries of origin won't take them back. That is a documented, existing, expanding program. It is not the same thing as the bus stop allegation, and folding the two together is exactly the kind of imprecise reporting that — actually, I should say, it's not reporting, it's an allegation, from a senator, that was rejected.…
…(cont) Now, is the third-country program itself controversial? I wouldn't use that word. It's a logistical solution to a real problem: some countries refuse repatriation, and the alternative is indefinite detention here, which nobody wants either. Sending someone from Afghanistan to a country in Africa they have no connection to is — well, when you say it like that it does sound like the point is just to get them out of the country, wherever that ends up being. That's not how I intended to characterize it, but I suppose that is functionally what's happening.
The agency's position on the bus stop claim stands: it was rejected, and no evidence has been presented publicly, to this reporter's knowledge. As for Africa, the flights are happening, the expansion is real, and it is being described as a 'third country' solution, which is a term of art, not a euphemism. I want to be clear I don't think it's a euphemism. I think it describes exactly what it is, which is sending people somewhere they've never been, because somewhere is the requirement, not somewhere specific.
So: allegation denied, program confirmed. Those are two different sentences, and I'd ask you to keep them that way, even though, saying it out loud, I understand why you wouldn't.
“They'll deny the thing that sounds monstrous and confirm the thing that's actually happening, and both sentences come out of the same podium in the same breath. Kids at a bus stop is a bridge too far to admit to; flying people to a country they've never seen is just Tuesday. That's the tell — watch what they don't bother denying.”
“The border czar was clear: there is no operation directing agents to detain individuals at children's bus stops, full stop. And the flights to Africa — those are for people whose home countries won't take them back, which is a logistical solution, not a punishment. I don't see how the two get compared. That's not what I meant to say, they're not comparable at all, is my point.”
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.