Last week, while appearing on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast, the president-elect’s son asked incoming “border czar” Tom Homan what border and immigration-related action the public can expect to see on Day 1 of the new Trump administration.
“Shock and awe,” Homan responded. “Shock and awe,” he repeated with a smile.
Homan, who served as the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration, has suggested he’s been waiting more than two years for this moment.
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At a public event last year, he recounted how, over dinner in Las Vegas in the middle of 2022 — several months before former President Donald Trump announced his reelection bid — Trump confided in Homan that he was going to run for the White House again and asked if he could count on Homan to return with him.
As Homan recalled, he told Trump, “I’ll tell you what, sir, I’m so pissed off I’ll come back for free.”
In the two years since then, Homan has used media appearances, public forums and even a nonprofit charity he launched to make his case for a return to Trump’s aggressive approach to border security and immigration enforcement, often wielding personal stories, government statistics and merciless rhetoric to warn that violent criminals, potential terrorists and other major threats are streaming across the border.
According to Homan, current immigration policies are “national suicide,” President Joe Biden is “treasonous,” and “something is coming.” Homan’s critics have called his views “cruel” and “cold.”
PHOTO: Migrants run to hide from the Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard after crossing into the United States from Mexico, in El Paso, Texas, May 8, 2023. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters, FILE)
As Homan sees it, he’s simply passionate about border security because of everything he’s experienced in his nearly four decades as a Border Patrol agent and top-level ICE official.
“I’m excited. We’re already working on these plans,” he said on Trump Jr.’s podcast last week.
But what has Homan said the new Trump administration’s border efforts and immigration policy will actually entail?
Here’s a comprehensive look at what Homan’s public statements have indicated about his possible plans, and why — despite his detractors — he insists it’s the right approach.
‘The biggest deportation’
Though numbers started to slow this past year, under the Biden administration, key border-related numbers surged to record levels, with nearly 9 million migrant encounters along the southwest border since Biden took office, more than 2 million more border-crossers reportedly detected but never captured, and more than 300 migrants stopped at the border with names matching known or suspected terrorists on a government watchlist.
While Homan has promised to execute “the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen,” he has also acknowledged the breadth of that operation largely depends on how much money Congress provides for it.
With Republicans about to control both the House and Senate, the new Trump administration could have significant flexibility to conduct its operation. But “it all depends on the resources we’re given,” especially because a bigger operation needs more officers and more detention beds for those being deported, Homan has said.
“Congress is going to have to give a massive amount of detention beds,” he said.
ICE’s current funding allows for less than 50,000 beds — and though ICE has long relied on privately-run detention facilities to help house migrants, that multimillion-dollar business could grow under Trump’s expected enforcement expansion.
Homan has said ICE may have to detain some migrants for as long as several weeks.
“What people don’t understand is we can’t just put [them on] a plane,” he said. “There’s a process we have to go through. You have to contact the country, they have to agree to accept them, then they got to send you travel documents. And that takes several days to several weeks. So we need detention assets.”
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To boost ICE’s ranks, Homan has suggested the administration could move officers from other agencies to assist. And in recent days, Trump has indicated he will seek help from the U.S. military by declaring a national emergency, though Trump did not offer any details. In the past, members of the National Guard have been deployed to the border to help with surveillance or administrative tasks — not to make arrests.
“The bottom line is: Can Tom Homan remove 10 million people in a year? No. I’m not going to lie to you,” Homan said on a podcast last year. “But we’re going to be out there looking for them [and] when we find them, remove them.”
Homan has promised a “targeted” approach, at first prioritizing known or suspected national security threats, migrants with criminal histories who are already detained by local law enforcement, and “fugitives” who were already ordered removed by a federal judge.
Appearing on Fox News on Monday, Homan said he’s traveling to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate later this week “to put the final touches on the plan.”
Homan has previously vowed whatever they ultimately do will be “humane.”
“We can do this right … because we can’t lose the faith of the American people,” he said.
Homan has also said that the Trump administration must finish building the wall along the southwest border and must pressure so-called “sanctuary cities” to help flag criminal migrants in their custody.
Child separation ‘needs to be considered’
Homan has strongly disputed claims that he created the highly controversial policy that separated thousands of children from their parents during the first Trump administration, when he was acting ICE director.
However, he has publicly expressed support for it, telling CBS News in the run-up to the election that child separation “needs to be considered, absolutely.
In April 2018, when the first Trump administration was still developing its “zero tolerance” approach to illegal immigration, Homan and two counterparts in other agencies signed a memo recommending that, among other potential measures, the Trump administration should seriously consider prosecuting “all amenable adults” crossing the border illegally, including parents crossing with their families.
“[It] would likely have the most effective impact,” the memo said.
The next month, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference in San Diego to publicly declare that parents who unlawfully brought their children across the border would be prosecuted and separated from their children, Homan told reporters that his department “stands shoulder to shoulder” with Sessions.
However, at the same press conference, Homan disputed that the Trump administration had “created new policy.”
“This has always been the policy,” he said. “Every law enforcement agency in this country separates parents from their children when they’re arrested for a crime. … That child can’t go into a U.S. [jail].”
PHOTO: Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Thomas Homan poses for a portrait in East Point, Ga., April 26, 2018. (John Bazemore/AP, FILE)
“The policy remains the same, there’s just going to be more of what we’ve been doing,” he said.
A subsequent report from the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that Sessions “was a driving force in the DHS decision to begin referring family unit adults for prosecution,” and that what he pushed created a change in “DHS practice” dating back to at least 1992.
Over just two months in 2018, more than 3,000 children were separated from their families, “and issues regarding reuniting children with a parent remain,” said the report, issued in January 2021, nearly three years after the “zero tolerance” policy was implemented.
The policy sparked an international uproar, with some of its most ardent critics saying it amounted to “torture carried out in the name of the American people.” Media reports captured the trauma suffered by children who were taken from their parents. Under such pressure, then-President Trump ultimately reversed the policy.
In his 2020 memoir, Homan wrote that despite “the screaming” over the Trump administration’s approach, “during the few weeks the zero-tolerance policy was actually enforced, illegal crossings at the Rio Grande Valley went down over 20 percent.”
“How many women were saved from exploitation? How many kids were not abused or killed by coyotes? How many bad guys did we prevent from entering our communities? We’ll never know the exact number, but we made a difference,” Homan wrote.
Pressed by CBS News last month about whether family separations will happen under Trump’s next administration, Homan said one way to avoid them is to deport children and their parents — “Families can be deported together,” he said.
End ‘catch and release’
By the time Trump took office in 2017, the government’s limited capacity to detain migrants made it common practice for U.S. authorities to release nonviolent border-crossers claiming asylum into the United States while they waited for their cases to be heard by a judge — a practice that has become known as “catch and release.”
But a backlog of cases, driven by a shortage of immigration court judges, has meant that after being released, asylum cases can take years to resolve, with no guarantee that migrants will actually show up in court or leave voluntarily if they lose their cases.
While the first Trump administration took steps to limit “catch and release,” the practice has expanded under the Biden administration as it’s faced an unprecedented influx of migrants.
“End catch and release, that needs to happen Day One,” Homan said last week of Trump’s second term. “Because if you end ‘catch and release,’ they’ll stop coming.”
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To illustrate how migrants are exploiting the practice, Homan has often pointed to government data showing that, as he puts it, “nearly nine out of ten never get relief from the U.S. courts because they don’t qualify” for asylum. He has said those nine out of 10 asylum-seekers are “committing fraud.”
But the statistics are complicated: Instead of showing that nine out of 10 asylum claims in court are denied, they show that a significant portion of asylum claims are never formally filed with an application, are abandoned, or are derailed in court for other unclear reasons. Under the Biden administration, more asylum claims have actually been granted in court than explicitly denied.
Nevertheless, Homan has long said that anyone with a legitimate claim of asylum shouldn’t try to enter the country through a desert or across a river — they should go to an official port of entry.
“If you have a clear claim to asylum, go to the port of entry where you’re safe,” he said at the May 2018 press conference in San Diego. “This isn’t just about law enforcement, this is about saving lives.”
According to Homan, part of ending “catch and release” is reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” program launched under the first Trump administration, which blocked asylum seekers on the southwest border from entering the United States while their asylum cases were pending.
On Trump Jr.’s podcast last week, Homan said he believes that pushed migrants to stop coming, “and so the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program has to be put back in place.”
End birthright citizenship and ‘chain migration’
In a campaign video last year, Trump said that “on Day 1 of my new term in office,” he will end the court-backed tradition of birthright citizenship, which for centuries has automatically bestowed U.S. citizenship to anyone born inside the United States, regardless of their parents’ status.
Trump suggested the practice stems from “a historical myth and a willful misinterpretation” of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
“As part of my plan to secure the border,” Trump said in the campaign video, “I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.”
“My policy will choke off a major incentive for continued illegal immigration,” he added.
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Homan has echoed that sentiment, saying on a podcast last year, “One thing that we’re going to have this president do … [is] end birthright citizenship.”
Both Homan and Trump have said ending birthright citizenship will also put an end to so-called “birth tourism,” when pregnant women from overseas travel to the United States so they can give birth on U.S. soil and ensure their new child is granted U.S. citizenship.
In his campaign video, Trump said his Day 1 executive order will end that “unfair practice” and, according to him, its abuse by parents who then “jump the line and get green cards for themselves and their family members” — part of a practice known as “chain migration.”
In his 2020 book, entitled “Defend the Border and Save Lives,” Homan said “chain migration” leads to an “uncontrollable increase in legal immigration.” But he supported “chain migration” for spouses and children, writing, “The family household is the building block of our society, and we must support policies that keep this unit intact.
In last year’s campaign video, Trump said his executive order will stipulate that at least one parent of a U.S. citizen child will have to be a citizen or legal permanent resident themselves in order for the rest of the family to qualify for immigration benefits.
‘Worksite operations have to happen’
Part of Homan’s approach is to discourage employers from hiring undocumented immigrants in the first place.
During a recent appearance on Fox News, he said “worksite operations have to happen,” particularly because — according to him — so many undocumented immigrants found at targeted worksites were either sex-trafficked or forced into labor.
But he has also said that employers should be legally required to use E-Verify, an online U.S. government system that enables employers to confirm the employment eligibility of their employees.
All federal contractors and vendors are required to use it, and several states require every employer within the state to use it — but across the country E-Verify is still a largely voluntary program.
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As Homan describes it, broader usage of the system would help diminish a significant driver of illegal migration by making it harder for undocumented immigrants to find work. “We got to establish E-Verify so they can’t get a job as easy,” he said on a podcast last year.
Homan has recognized that critical parts of the U.S. economy like farming, construction and meatpacking often rely on undocumented workers — “but that’s a stupid reason not to enforce our laws,” he wrote in his 2020 book.
Nevertheless, Homan has said that the U.S. government — while still enforcing immigration laws — should also expand current programs or establish new ones that would allow more immigrants to work inside the country temporarily
“If there are jobs up here that we need these people for, then create a program, and bring them in legally,” he told WWNY-TV in Watertown, New York, last week. “That way they’re not paying the criminal cartels, they’re not swimming across the river. … I much prefer that than people entering illegally, because it’s a dangerous thing to do.”
Border security ‘with the stroke of a pen’
As Homan makes plans to get to work on Day 1 of a new Trump administration, several sources familiar with the matter have told ABC News that executive orders will be a substantial part of the approach.
“If you want to secure the border, do it with the stroke of a pen, just like President Trump did,” Homan said on a podcast earlier this year, referring to executive actions taken in Trump’s first term.
At least some of the measures Homan has advocated could be advanced through executive orders.
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On a podcast in February, Homan said he’s also “going to push” for either an executive order or new legislation that “clearly” bans someone who disobeys a judge’s deportation order from ever receiving any form of future legal immigration status.
“If after due process you’ve been ordered removed by a federal judge, and you don’t leave, you will never qualify for another immigration benefit the rest of your life,” Homan said — adding that the proposal could even ban them from getting a tourist visa.
“If that was actually in effect, a lot of people would leave on their own because many of them have U.S. citizen children,” and they don’t want to rule out being able to return to the United States someday, the former ICE official said.
“Big things are coming in the weeks ahead,” Homan wrote on X this past week.
‘Shock and awe’: What Trump ‘border czar’ Tom Homan has said he plans to do starting on Day 1 originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
