US president-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), will be in charge of the country’s borders in his new administration.
Homan’s areas of control will include “the southern border, the northern border, all maritime, and aviation security”, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. Trump added that “border czar” Homan will be in charge of the deportation of illegal immigrants.
Homan, who served in Trump administration for a year and a half during his first term, is also a contender for secretary of homeland security.
Mass deportations – and housing migrants in camps – were a key part of Trump’s pitch on the campaign trail. Trump spoke favorably of Homan, telling Fox News host Harris Faulkner in July: “I have Tom Homan lined up, we have the greatest people.”
A Heritage fellow and Project 2025 author, Homan told this summer’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee he had “a message for the millions of illegal aliens who Joe Biden allowed to enter the country in violation of federal law – start packing, because you’re going home.”
At a panel on immigration policy in July, Homan said: “Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”
Homan was also reported to have accepted an invitation to a white nationalist conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, the Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer who dined with Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.
On Thursday, Homan told Fox News he had “not politicked or asked … for a cabinet position”, and that no offer had been made. But he added: “President Trump knows if he needs help securing that border I’m standing by. If he needs help running a deportation operation, I am standing by.”
The president-elect is meeting with potential candidates to serve in his administration before his inauguration as president on 20 January.
CNN reported on Sunday that Trump had offered Republican Representative Elise Stefanik the job as US ambassador to the United Nations.
With Reuters