President-elect Donald Trump’s new border czar, former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan, has a plan to secure the border and curtail illegal immigration.
Trump announced Sunday that he was tapping Homan to secure the nation’s borders and end the illegal immigration crisis, a major focus of Trump’s campaign. Homan, who began his career as a Border Patrol agent, gained notoriety after he endorsing Trump’s plan to implement the largest deportation operation in American history.
“People say, ‘How are you going to remove millions?’ The answer is: One at a time,” he explained. “No one’s off the table. If you’re in the country illegally in violation of immigration law, you are a target.”
He reaffirmed his commitment to the deportation effort at the Republican National Convention, giving a speech where he told illegal aliens to “pack their bags” as attendees waved signs that read “Mass Deportation Now.”
In a widely-shared clip, Homan explained to 60 Minutes host Cecilia Vega how illegal aliens can be deported without separating families.
“Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” the host asked Homan. “Of course there is, families can be deported together,” Homan responded.
Cecilia Vega asks: “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?”
“Of course there is. Families can be deported together,” says Tom Homan, head of ICE during Trump’s family separation policy. https://t.co/If9G1sNEzj pic.twitter.com/TIWhi25Vdu
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 28, 2024
When asked about the projected cost to deport illegal aliens, Homan shot back “what price do you put on our national security?”
Trump explained that Homan will be tasked with carrying out his mass deportation plan. “Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” he noted in his statement naming Homan his new “border czar.”
Homan has celebrated Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required migrants to stay in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed. President Joe Biden reversed the policy on his first day in office. Under Biden, migrants were released into the United States and told to return to court for their asylum hearings, with some being given court dates as late as 2033.
“The Remain in Mexico program was probably the biggest game changer in the Trump administration,” Homan explained in an interview with the Heritage Foundation. “What simply it is, if you’re going to claim asylum, you’re going to wait outside the country in Mexico until your hearing rather than being released into the United States.”
He also explained the issue with the Biden administration’s approach. “Half of them won’t show up to court, even if they lose the case, they don’t leave,” Homan noted. “They’re just going to wait for the next giveaway, next amnesty, next DACA.”
In addition to discussing ways to secure the border and return illegal aliens to their home countries, Homan has explained how amnesty proposals reward and encourage those who’ve illegally entered the United States.
He pointed directly to President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as one way amnesty programs encourage mass illegal immigration.
“We’ve sent the message to the world that if you hide out long enough, we will reward your illegal behavior. It’s no coincidence that family unit crossings surged shortly after DACA was created in 2012,” he wrote in his book “Defend the Border and Save Lives.”
“In the past few years, thousands of parents brought children into this country illegally ‘through no fault of the child,’ and they will be our next DACA population if we don’t fix this problem once and for all.”
Honan has also advocated for a system of mandatory E-Verify, a program that would prevent companies from hiring illegal aliens and, according to Homan, would “stem the flow of illegal alien labor” into the United States.
The program, Homan contends, would help curtail illegal immigration by removing the economic incentives that motivate many migrants to attempt to illegally enter the United States.
“This program would save tens of millions of dollars annually in enforcement operations by making it much more difficult to use fake identities,” Homan wrote of the E-Verify program, going on to say that it “is the best tool available, and currently prevents a significant amount of unauthorized employment.”
“What’s frustrating to me … is that we even have some Republicans in Congress who don’t want to see E-Verify enacted,” Homan explained in 2020 in an interview with the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS.) “If they truly want to stop illegal employment they need a system of checks and balances, and E-Verify, with some moderate changes, could be effective.”
Homan has also endorsed Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern border and vouched for its effectiveness at impeding illegal crossings. “Every place they built a border barrier, illegal immigration went down, illegal drug problems went down without exception,” he explained while speaking with the Heritage Foundation.
“We’ve always wanted a barrier for two reasons,” Homan said of Border Patrol personnel. “Number one, a barrier will help slow down those crossing illegally and second of all, for the most vulnerable, the women, the children, the family units, they can’t climb that wall, so that will funnel them to a place where there’s not a wall, which the border patrol could staff that end of that funnel and be able to respond to any humanitarian concerns, any health concerns,” he explained.
Trump’s decision to name Homan as his “border czar” will mark a drastic shift from the approach of the Biden-Harris administration. More than 10 million people have crossed the border under the Biden-Harris administration, with an estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrant gotaways recorded since Biden was inaugurated in 2021. Trump also named immigration hawk Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff for policy, a sign that the president-elect is poised to enact the slate of hardline immigration policies he campaigned on.