TOI Correspondent from Washington: A former police officer and national security hardliner who crafted a controversial policy to separate parents and children to deter illegal immigration during Donald Trump’s first term will be his “Deporter-in-Chief” during his second stint.
The President-elect on Sunday announced that Tom Homan, an immigration hawk with a fearsome reputation among liberals will be his “Border Czar” to oversee what Trump has proposed will be “the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in US history.”
“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders…he will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin… I have no doubt he will do a fantastic, and long awaited job,” Trump announced in a social media post.
Homan was promoted to acting Director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term and came to national attention with policies civil liberties activists saw as brutal and inhuman. They included forcibly separating parents from children in an effort to curtail illegal immigration.
“Most parents don’t want to be separated,” Homan explained in one interview, arguing that this made separation an effective tool for immigration enforcement. “I’d be lying to you if I didn’t think that would have an effect,” he added.
Since then, he has become a legend in MAGA circles for his take-no-prisoners approach to immigration, including denying birthright citizenship to children born in the US to illegal immigrants, a right granted by the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Homan supported deporting U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, stating, “Families can be deported together.” Another time, he said, “No one’s off the table. If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.” About the illegals, he once said, “You better start packing now… cause you’re going home.”
In more accommodating moments, Homan has said only illegal immigrants have to be fearful. “I hear a lot of people say, ‘The talk of a mass deportation is racist. It’s threatening to the immigrant community,'” he said, maintaining the only threat is to the illegal immigrant community.
Homan joined the Heritage Foundation in February 2022 and was a contributor to its Project 2025, which proposes mass arrests, detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants across America. He has also proposed that politicians who support sanctuary city policies — who are mostly Democrats who have a more nuanced and liberal view of illegal immigrants — should be charged with crimes.
Homan’s nomination, which will have to confirmed by the Senate, was long-anticipated and he himself booked the spot, telling, a July 2024 National Conservatism Conference meeting, “If 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. They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
Trump’s nomination of Homan as a border firefighter was greeted with horror by the liberal-progressive spectrum. “Tom Homan is not human. At the border, he gleefully separated children from their parents and then caged them. He sees all of them as less than human, far below the level of rabbits and feral chickens. He’s cruel,” read one post on social media.
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