Trump announces Tom Homan, former director of immigration enforcement, will serve as 'border czar'

NEW YORK -

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says Tom Homan, his former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, will serve as "border czar" in his incoming administration, a position that is likely to play a key role in Trump's campaign pledges to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and mount a massive deportation operation.

"I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation's Borders," he wrote late Sunday on his Truth Social site.

In addition to overseeing the southern and northern borders and "maritime, and aviation security," Trump said Homan "will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin," a central part of his agenda.

He says he had "no doubt" Homan "will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job."

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Homan is a tough-talking former Border Patrol agent who worked his way up to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2017 and 2018 as the acting director. He was never confirmed by the Senate, and his new role does not require it.

Bringing him on shows the lengths that the Trump administration is likely to go to carry out the hardline immigration pledges that were a hallmark of the campaign. However, Homan has also pushed back on rhetoric suggesting massive roundups.

At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington earlier this year, Homan said that while he thinks the government needed to prioritize national security threats, "no one's off the table. If you're here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder."

He also said: "You've got my word. Trump comes back in January, I'll be in his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen."

He said in recent interviews, however, that those targeted -- at least initially -- would be people posing a risk to public safety and pushed back on suggestions that the U.S. military would be assisting in finding and deporting immigrants.

"You concentrate on the public safety threats and the national security threats first, because they're the worst of the worst," he said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." He also said ICE would move to implement Trump's plans in a "humane manner."

"It's going to be a well-targeted, planned operation conducted by the men of ICE. The men and women of ICE do this daily. They're good at it," he said.

During a "60 Minutes" interview before the election, Homan called suggestions of mass neighbourhood raids or building camps to hold people "ridiculous."

When asked whether there was a way to carry out deportations without separating families, he said, "Families can be deported together." He also said worksite immigration enforcement operations -- which the Biden administration largely stopped -- would be "necessary."

Gil Kerlikowske, who knows Homan from when Kerlikowske headed U.S. Customs and Border Protection under then-President Barack Obama, said Homan likely got the job because he's been a strong, vocal supporter of Trump since leaving office and knows how the border and immigration works.

He added that unlike other figures such as Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner who's also been tapped for a top White House job, Homan's decades in immigration jobs means he knows the difficulties of launching a massive deportation operation.

"Tom is much more knowledgeable about what can be done and what's practical," Kerlikowske said.

Trump has long vowed the massive deportation of people living in the country illegally, but logistical and financial challenges make that difficult to carry out.

ICE has about 41,500 detention beds at any one time, and countries have to agree to take back their citizens, which is not always a given, especially for those with which the U.S. has no diplomatic relations, like Venezuela.

Obama carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the highest annual total since records were kept. Deportations under Trump never topped 350,000.

Homan started his career in 1984 as a Border Patrol agent before moving to ICE. He was a relatively low-key but influential figure on immigration enforcement in the Obama administration, heading ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations arm -- tasked with tracking down people who don't have the right to be in the country and removing them.

During his first administration, Trump scrapped Obama-era policies limiting deportations to people who posed a public safety threat, convicted criminals and those who have crossed the border recently, effectively making anyone without legal status open to apprehension.

During that time, Homan spearheaded a 40 per cent surge in deportation arrests and established policies to make immigration arrests at courthouses and detain pregnant women.

He was also a key figure responsible for immigration when the Trump administration launched its zero-tolerance policy, which separated migrant parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

When Homan retired as acting head of ICE, he said he wanted to spend more time with family. In an interview with the AP in 2018, he said he had not intended to stay on into the Trump administration but did after then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly asked him to stay. Homan said he was at his own retirement party when he got the request. Kelly gave him a weekend to decide, and he accepted.

After Homan stepped down, it appeared that he might be returning when Trump said in 2019 he wanted to bring Homan back as a "border czar."

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Homan said the announcement was premature. The reason he gave at the time may give some insight into how he believes the "border czar" position needs to operate this time around.

"I think any sort of border czar needs to be a person who coordinates an all-government response to the border," adding, "That wasn't the way it was set up," he told Fox News at the time.

After leaving the Trump administration, Homan wrote a book titled, "Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving our Most Humanitarian and Security Crisis" and has been a frequent guest on Fox News.

Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.