Who Is Trump's New 'Border Czar,' Tom Homan?

Now that the election is over, and both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called former president Donald Trump to congratulate him on his win, Trump has started to make announcements on who will be doing what in his second administration. One such announcement via Truth Social, Trump's own social media platform, was that Tom Homan would be "in charge of our Nation's Borders ("The Border Czar") — including, but not limited to, the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security."

Homan got his undergraduate degree in criminal justice, and he is a longtime law enforcement officer with a history of working on deportation policies. He was a police officer in New York, and he later worked as a Border Patrol agent. In Barack Obama's second term, Homan was in charge of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and in 2015, he was given the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Service.

Tom Homan worked for Donald Trump as acting ICE director, and he has been credited with coming up with the child separation policy that was enacted during Trump's term. Briefly, families illegally traveling to the U.S. had their children taken away and placed in separate shelters as a part of a "zero tolerance" policy. Homan felt that the policy would help discourage those trying to enter the U.S. illegally, and he'd tried to have it enacted for years. It gave us, among other things, the moment when Melania Trump wore her now infamous "I really don't care" jacket when she went to visit one of the child separation centers in Texas.

Homan has talked about the rationale behind the controversial policy, which left families separated for months and even years with some families still not yet reunited. "The goal wasn't to traumatize," Homan told The Atlantic."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."

He's been defiant over the policy and the backlash it received. "I'm sick and tired of hearing about the family separation," Homan said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference. "I'm still being sued over that. I don't give a s***, right? Bottom line is we enforced the law" (via The Hill).

In his Truth Social post announcing Tom Homan's position in his administration, Donald Trump wrote: "Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin." One of Trump's major campaign promises was to deport undocumented migrants in the millions. While Homan left ICE in 2018, he seems ready to get back to it and he's in support of Trump's unprecedented plan. "Of course, there has to be historic deportation," Homan told The Sunday Times when talking about Trump's plans, "because we had historic immigration where nine out of ten are going to lose their [asylum] case, and the judge is going to say, you must go home."

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, Homan talked a bit about how the deportations would take place: "When we go out there, we're going to know who we're looking for. We'll most likely know where they're going to be, and it's going to be done in a humane manner."

Homan was also a contributor to Project 2025, a set of proposed policies put together by a conservative think tank that, if enacted, would transform the government and the country. On the campaign trail, Trump frequently said that he wasn't connected to Project 2025; however, it does seem as though some of the immigration policies in it are in line with Trump and Homan's plans.