In 2024, as he did in 2016, Donald Trump campaigned heavily on immigration, deploying violent and graphic rhetoric about migrant crime and vowing to enact mass deportation efforts beginning on day one of his presidency. One key figure in achieving these dark goals will be Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who Trump named on Sunday as his new “border czar.”
“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders. Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
During his brief tenure leading ICE, Homan quickly became known as a hardliner on immigration who embraced the administration’s family-separation policy as a way of deterring illegal border crossings. Homan made it clear during a speech at the Republican National Convention this summer that his stance on the issue has never wavered. “As a guy who spent 34 years deporting illegal aliens, I got a message to the millions of illegal aliens that Joe Biden’s released in our country in violation of federal law: You better start packing now. You’re damn right. Cause you’re going home,” he said.
In a series of recent interviews, Homan laid out what mass deportations would look like under a Trump presidency.
Homan has said the government will focus on people who pose a threat to public safety and national security, but indicated that those categories could expand. He’s also said that workplace raids and the mass arrests at job sites that ended under the Biden administration “have to happen.”
During an appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes in October, he rejected the idea that such actions were “racist” in nature and said that talk of concentration camps holding detainees was overblown.
During Trump’s first term, thousands of immigrant children were separated from their families while the administration’s policy was enforced. Homan was asked on 60 Minutes whether there was any way to conduct mass-deportation operations in the country without separating parents from their children. The incoming border czar signaled that an even stricter policy could be enacted down the line. “Of course there is. Families can be deported together,” he said.
And when asked if the American-born children of undocumented immigrants could be subject to deportation under a Trump administration, Homan did not close the door on that possibility. “Their parent absolutely entered the country illegally, had a child knowing he was in the country illegally. So, he created that crisis,” he said.
Though allies of Trump like Stephen Miller have suggested that the administration will utilize the military and National Guard to conduct its deportation efforts, Homan has pushed back on that, saying the operation will be conducted by members of ICE. “The men and women of ICE do this daily. They’re good at it. They all have Fourth Amendment training. They know what they can and can’t do legally,” he said on Fox News Sunday.
Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance has previously said that the administration should start with deporting 1 million people who are in the country illegally. But a report from the American Immigration Council estimates that it could cost $88 million to remove that many people on a yearly basis. Homan has insisted that mass deportations would ultimately save the country and taxpayers money over the years.
By selecting Homan as one of his first staffing decisions, Trump is making it clear that his immigration agenda is top of mind. For months, Homan signaled his intention to return in a second Trump administration to finish the job that he started. “Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” he said in July, per Semafor. “They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
