Thomas Homan, whom Donald Trump intends to make his new “border czar” to implement his immigration expulsion policy, is an old acquaintance of the former Republican government (2017-2021), in which he occupied an interim position on the same ground.
Homan was involved during his previous term in a controversial initiative involving the separation of undocumented immigrant families and conceived by a top adviser to the first Trump administration, Stephen Miller.
Under this initiative, children who crossed the southern border of the United States without legal authorization were separated from their parents or other adults so they could face criminal prosecution.
The policy began in 2017, during Trump’s first term, and intensified in early 2018 before the administration abandoned it after large numbers of Americans denounced it as inhumane.
“I am pleased to announce that former Director of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and stalwart border control advocate, Tom Homan, will join the Trump Administration to take charge of our nation’s borders,” he said. announced the president-elect on Sunday. a message on his social network.
Homan, 62, is a former police officer and government official who, during the first Trump administration, served as acting director of ICE, a position he was never able to officially hold because it was not ratified by the US Senate.
Homan describes himself as a staunch supporter of Trump’s illegal immigration policies and supports the president-elect’s announcement on the campaign trail that if he won the election, he would order the “largest deportation ever” of undocumented immigrants in history. . “of the United States.”
Currently, there are an estimated 11 million undocumented people residing in the country (3% of the population) and nearly 80% have resided in the United States for more than a decade.
“I hear a lot of people say that talking about mass deportation is racist. This is a threat to the immigrant community. And that’s not the case. He should be a threat to the illegal immigrant community. And coming on the heels of a historic illegal immigration crisis, this is something that needs to be done,” Homan said in a recent interview with CBS.
An interview in which he clarified some of the priorities of what his mandate could be if he joined Trump’s team again.
So when asked: What would the largest deportation in U.S. history look like for him? He said, “Well, let me tell you what it won’t be.” This will not be a massive cleanup of the neighborhood. It will not be about building concentration camps. I read everything. “This is ridiculous.”
Homan emphasized that what he would do would be a policy of “selective arrests.” “We will know who we are going to arrest, where they are most likely to be found, through many investigative processes,” he said. He also said that if he became responsible for immigration policy, he would prioritize national security and threats to public safety.
“It is not acceptable to enter a country illegally, it is a crime. This is what motivates illegal immigration, when there are no consequences. The Biden-Harris administration showed it: you can arrive at the border, surrender and be released in 24 hours,” he criticized.
The numbers dismantle this narrative, as Biden has expelled more migrants than Trump expelled during his first term.
He also denied being the “father of Trump’s family separation policy”: “That’s not true. I didn’t write the memo to separate families. I signed the memorandum. Why did I sign it? I hoped to save lives. As you and I speak, a child is going to die at the border. So we thought if we sued people, maybe they would stop coming.
And although he said then that if Trump won a second term, this policy would be a consideration, he acknowledged that a policy of mass expulsions would not deter immigrants from crossing the border illegally, because “people will continue to try to come and seek for a better life. »
