How will the ‘border tsar’ approach immigration?

Veteran immigration official Tom Homan will be in charge of the country’s borders following Trump’s inauguration in January.

With a decades-long career in law enforcement and at the border, all eyes will be on how he plans to cut down on illegal immigration into the US – a flagship policy of Trump’s election campaign.

So how will he approach the task?

Homan – an ex-policeman and former acting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) director – has described immigration at the US border as “the biggest national security vulnerability this nation has seen since 9/11 and we have to fix it.”

Addressing illegal immigrants in the US during the Republican National Convention in the summer, he said: “You better start packing now.”

But it is not yet clear how his role as “border tsar” will take shape, as managing immigration involves coordination among several government agencies.

He has however, provided some ideas on how he would approach the border.

In an interview with CBS News’s 60 Minutes in October, prior to Trump’s election, Homan indicated he would seek to target non-criminal immigrants who are in the country illegally, after first prioritising “public safety threats” and “national security threats”.

Such an approach would reverse Biden administration policies that direct Ice to focus on deporting serious criminals, national security threats and recent border crossers.

The current Biden policy helps protect undocumented immigrants who have been living in the US and have not committed crimes.

Homan has said he would use a targeted approach would be used when carrying out arrests and deportations.

Asked in the same October interview how deportations would be carried out, Homan said: “It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighbourhoods. It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

“They’ll be targeted arrests. We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find ’em based on numerous… investigative processes,” he added.

Homan played a role in Trump’s controversial “zero tolerance” policy, which separated thousands of migrant children from their parents.

The policy sparked backlash when children were sent to shelters while their parents were prosecuted with no plans to reunite them.

Homan has said he didn’t write the policy memo that led to the separations, but he was one of three officials who signed it. He said he signed it “hoping to save lives”.

Homan indicated that he would not seek to re-instate that policy.

Rather, he has said families could be “deported together”, when asked whether deportations could be carried out without separating families.

Homan also has pointed to reviving mass immigration arrests at workplaces – what he refers to as work-site enforcement operations, which Biden discontinued in 2021.

“As far as the people going to push back on deporting, what is the option?,” he said on Fox News’s Fox & Friends on Monday.

“You have the right to claim asylum. You have a right to see a judge. We make that happen. But at the end of that due process if the judge says you must go home, then we have to take them home.”

Homan, 62, started his career as a police officer in New York state before serving as a border patrol agent – a role he often references.

“I was a border patrol agent. I wore the uniform,” he told Fox & Friends on Monday. “I’m proud that I wore the uniform… I was the first Ice director to come up through the ranks.”

Former President Barack Obama appointed him to head Ice’s deportation branch in 2013. It marked a time when the agency conducted a record number of deportations.

Homan’s work won him the Presidential Rank Award, the highest civil service recognition.

Trump appointed Homan as acting director of Ice during his second week in office in 2017, a role he continued in until 2018.

Trump later nominated him to become the agency’s permanent director, but the Senate never moved on the nomination.

Homan, who currently serves as a Fox News contributor, joined the conservative Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow and is a contributor to Project 2025, an ultra-conservative policy proposal.

It mentions increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border, creating a more powerful border policing operation and increasing fees on immigrants.

Trump has distanced himself from the agenda while on the campaign trail.