Chances are, most Americans have never heard the name Tom Homan. Given the role he’ll soon hold in Donald Trump’s second administration, he’ll likely be far better known quite soon. NBC News reported:
President-elect Donald Trump announced late Sunday that Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who backed his controversial “zero tolerance” policy, will be his administration’s “border czar.”
“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 (‘The Border Czar’), including, but not limited to, the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security,” Trump wrote in a message posted to his social media platform.
“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” the missive continued. “Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin. Congratulations to Tom. I have no doubt he will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job.”
The president-elect’s confidence is misplaced.
As Rachel explained on the show a few weeks ago, Homan is largely considered an architect of Trump’s policy to tear children away from their parents at the border. He also happens to be one of the Republicans who helped write the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint.
At a radical rally in Pennsylvania last month, Homan also publicly vowed, “I will run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen.”
Five weeks later, Trump tapped him to serve as the nation’s “border czar.” (The position does not require Senate confirmation.)
Ahead of Election Day, the Republican candidate boasted about his vision of mass deportations — apparently by way of militarized deportations and mass detention camps — though some of his congressional allies have suggested in the election’s wake that the actual policy will be less extreme. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” for example, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said the incoming administration intended to focus on “migrants here who have committed crimes.”
On NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso made a similar comment, telling host Kristen Welker, in reference to deportations, “We’re talking about people who are from criminal cartels, drug dealers, people on the terrorist watch list.”
There are, however, a couple of reasons to be skeptical of these efforts to downplay the scope of the upcoming policy. For one thing, it’s at odds with Trump’s first-term agenda.
For another, Homan has already made clear that his focus wouldn’t be limited to dangerous criminals. In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired a couple of weeks ago, for example, the incoming “border czar” was asked whether there was a way to carry out mass deportations without separating families. “Of course there is,” he replied. “Families can be deported together.” In the same interview, Homan suggested that children who are American citizens should also expect to pack up and move to an unfamiliar country if their parents are undocumented. There was a time in the not-too-distant past that Republicans shied away from such positions, fearing a backlash from Latino voters. But in 2024, Trump ran on a reactionary anti-immigrant platform and made dramatic gains among Latino voters anyway. Ron Brownstein has written quite a bit about this for The Atlantic, explaining that Trump has reason to believe he can “achieve the best of both worlds politically”: The Republican can energize xenophobic, far-right voters with his anti-immigrant agenda, while adding votes from immigrant communities that either don’t know or don’t care about his hate-filled vision. It’s against this backdrop that Homan is receiving a radical remit from the president-elect. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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