Who is Tom Homan and what has Trump’s ‘Border Czar’ said about his deportation plans?
Trump made immigration central to his 2024 campaign promising the largest deportation in US history. Here’s the person that will oversee that mission.
President-elect Donald Trump has begun naming who will staff his administration when he takes office again on January 20, 2025. On Sunday he announced that Tom Homan will be “The Border Czar” charged with “policing and controlling” the nation’s borders.
That will include, but not be limited to, “the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Additionally, Homan “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” stated the announcement.
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What job did Tom Homan have before being Trump’s Border Czar?
Homan, over the past 30 years, has worked his way up from a Border Patrol agent to serve as acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first Trump administration. He was in that position for a year and a half between January 2017 to June 2018 before he resigned when his nomination failed to move forward in the Senate.
During his time at the head of ICE, he oversaw the controversial “zero tolerance” family separation policy of which he was a key architect. In a second Trump administration he will be tasked with implementing and executing the president-elect’s promise to conduct the largest deportation in US history.
Homan has spoken about what such a mass deportation program would look like. During an ‘60 Minutes’ interview in October he said that “it would not be a mass sweep of neighborhoods, it’s not going to be building concentration camps.” Instead, Homan assures that the deportation program will be targeted.
He reiterate that point this Sunday during a Fox News interview. “It’s going to be a well-targeted, planned operation conducted by the men of ICE,” he said. “The men and women of ICE do this daily. They’re good at it.”
He added that it would be a “humane” process. When questioned on ’60 Minutes’ if there was a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families he replied, “of course there is. Families can be deported together.”