Trump Names Former ICE Director Thomas Homan as Border Czar

Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan speaks at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies on June 5, 2018. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

A former director of an immigration enforcement agency will join the second Trump administration as border czar, President-elect Donald Trump said on Nov. 10.

Thomas Homan will be “in charge of our nation’s borders,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The president-elect said that there is “nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders” and that Homan, 62, “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”

Border czar is an informal position that does not require approval from the U.S. Senate.

Homan said during an appearance on Fox News on Nov. 11 that he has been complaining about the immigration crisis for years and would be a hypocrite if he did not accept the request to head efforts on the border.

“I’m honored the president asked me to come back and help solve this national security crisis, so I’m looking forward to it,” he said.

Homan served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency charged with protecting the United States from illegal immigration, from 2017 through 2018. Most deportations are carried out by ICE, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Some lawmakers praised the selection of Homan, who is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“Outstanding choice,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote on social media platform X.

Homan has advocated enforcing federal laws concerning illegal immigration, including deporting people who are illegally in the country.

Trump, both before and since the recent election, has outlined a plan to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

“We have no choice,” he said recently.

Estimates of the illegal immigrant population in the United States range from about 11 million to 21 million.

The number of illegal immigrants has spiked since Trump left office. The Biden administration revoked key Trump-era immigration policies, including the building of the wall at the U.S.–Mexico border, although it later resumed some wall construction. President Joe Biden also paused deportations for some time, and during his administration, there have been lower levels of deportations than under Trump.

In surveys from earlier this year, about half of respondents said they support mass deportations. The proposal is strongly favored by Republicans and opposed by most independents and Democrats, according to a Gallup survey.

Many Democrat lawmakers have criticized Trump’s mass deportation plan, saying they believe it will affect long-settled families and negatively affect the economy.

Mass deportation “would lead to a financial crisis ... because of all the workers we would lose,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote on social media in October.

Since winning the presidential election, Trump has been working on filling top roles in his second administration. He said Susie Wiles, who helped with his campaign, will be his White House chief of staff, and that Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) will be his ambassador to the United Nations.

He also said that Nikki Haley, who was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during his first term in office, and Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state during that term, would not be participating in the new administration.