What to know about Tom Homan, the former ICE head returning as Trump’s ‘border czar’

President-elect Trump announced Sunday night that Tom Homan, his former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will join his second administration to oversee border control.

In his role as “border czar” — which does not require Senate confirmation — Homan will be in charge of the southern and northern U.S. borders, as well as “all Maritime and Aviation Security,” Trump said in his post on Truth Social.

“Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” Trump wrote, adding that “there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders.”

It is unclear what role Homan will take, since managing immigration requires coordination between several agencies under the Department of Homeland Security.

Homan, a former police officer and Border Patrol agent, has worked under six presidents during his three decades in law enforcement. He was executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Obama. During that administration, ICE carried out a record number of deportations.

Honan repeatedly praised Trump for being the one who did the most to secure the border.

Sunday’s announcement was largely expected, as Trump had said over the summer that he would tap Homan to help oversee immigration policies in his potential second term. Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in July, Homan told undocumented immigrants to “wait till 2025,” adding, “If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”

“Trump comes back in January,” Homan said. “I’ll be on his heels coming back. And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

Homan was behind Trump’s controversial family separation policy

Homan was the face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration during his tenure as acting director of ICE from January 2017 to June 2018.

During that time, he often appeared at White House press briefings to defend his agents’ arrests of undocumented immigrants and call for stronger enforcement, according to CNN, and applauded Trump for “taking the shackles off” ICE by allowing agents to make a broader range of arrests.

Notably, Homan was one of the architects behind its controversial family separation policy. More than 5,500 children of immigrants were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 under the administration’s short-lived “Zero Tolerance” policy. According to the Department of Homeland Security, as of April, there were still 1,401 children without confirmed reunification.

Trump signed an executive order stopping family separations in June 2018 after much condemnation from lawmakers and the public, and the Biden administration officially rescinded it days after President Biden took office in 2021.

Homan retired in frustration in 2018 when the White House failed to move his nomination toward Senate confirmation, according to the Washington Post. He became a Fox News contributor, joined the conservative Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow and contributed to Project 2025, its controversial blueprint for reshaping the federal government. 

Trump had sought to distance himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, even though it overlaps with his own agenda. Trump made immigration a major part of his campaign and has vowed to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country without authorization.

Homan has warned undocumented immigrants to ‘start packing’

Homan spoke about how such deportations would work in an interview on Fox Sunday Morning Futures hours before his appointment was announced, saying it would be a “well-targeted, planned operation, conducted … by the men of ICE.”

“When we go out there we’re gonna know who we’re looking for, we most likely know where they’re going to be and it’s gonna be done in a humane manner,” Homan said, adding that it will focus on the “public safety threats and the national security threats first.”

But those groups won’t be the only targets, Homan told CBS’ 60 Minutes last month. He said he would restart workplace enforcement after the Biden administration moved away from the controversial practice of mass worksite immigration raids in favor of pursuing “exploitative employers.” He also said in that interview that “families can be deported together,” suggesting children who are U.S. citizens but with undocumented parents would have to go with them.

Months earlier, speaking onstage at the Republican National Convention, Homan said Trump would designate Mexican cartels a “terrorist organization” for their role in getting fentanyl over the border, warning, “He’s gonna wipe you off the face of the Earth.”

He also addressed undocumented immigrants at large, whom he said Biden released into the country against federal law.

“You better start packing now,” he said, as attendees waving pro-deportation signs cheered. “‘Cause you’re going home.”

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals, while clearly a winning issue with voters, aren’t being met without pushback.

In the days since Trump’s election, immigrants rights groups have said they stand ready to challenge his anti-migrant policies through protests, local legislation and lawsuits. And analysts from the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute and the Niskanen Center project that lower — potentially even negative — net migration to the U.S. would hurt the country’s economy, as NPR has reported.

Homan is not the only appointee that Trump has named for his upcoming term. He announced last week that Susie Wiles will be his chief of staff.

On Monday, Trump offered Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who chairs the House Republican Conference, to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The role requires Senate confirmation, which is all but guaranteed in the soon-to-be Republican-controlled chamber.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán contributed to this report.