In 2016, following Donald Trump’s upset win for the White House, The Wall Street Journal reported that his campaign staff seemed flabbergasted by the scope of hiring and appointments required for an incoming administration. The stumbling start to Trump’s first administration delayed the draconian policy platform Trump had won the White House on — and it’s not a mistake he’s willing to make twice.
Days after winning a second term, the now president-elect is already rattling off a roster of incoming administration officials, none more closely aligned to his agenda than Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a Project 2025 contributor. Trump on Sunday named Homan “Border Czar” for the incoming administration.
“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 Sunday on Truth Social.
“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,” Trump added.
Under the fist Trump administration, Homan gained infamy as a prominent backer and executor of the president-elect’s “zero-tolerance” policy towards undocumented immigration — a policy which led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents in migrant detention centers.
Homan – who broke deportation records as the head of ICE’s deportation branch under the Obama administration — remains one of the most uncompromising anti-immigration hawks in Trump’s orbit. “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 said during a panel on immigration policy in July. “They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
Last month, Homan told CBS News’ 60 Minutes that raids of workplaces and roundups of undocumented people would be “necessary” to meet the deportation goals set by the Trump administration but that “my priorities are public safety threats and national security threats first.”
When asked if there was a way to carry out mass deportations without separating families, Homan replied “of course there is” and that “families can be deported together.”
In the interim between his work in Trump’s first administration, and his most recent appointment, Homan took an active hand in shaping the policies of a potential second Trump term. In 2022, Homan became a fellow at The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, and a contributor to the sweeping policy project’s immigration package. Despite Trump’s public claims throughout the campaign that he had “no idea” who was involved in Project 2025, his new “Border Czar” was one of 140 former Trump advisers, employees, and administration officials identified by CNN as collaborators in its creation.
Project 2025’s immigration platform includes mass deportations, expanded detention capabilities, and the heavy restriction of existing visa programs that would grant legal status to migrants entering the country. According to NOUTS, the reporting arm of the Allbritton Journalism Institute, since Trump’s victory last week Heritage Foundation staffers have been privately celebrating how they “tricked the Libs into believing Project 2025 wasn’t real.” Right-wing commentators have been gloating publicly on X, formerly Twitter.
Homan is entering an administration that has placed a giant target on the immigrant community, and he has the backing of a willing and prepared extended universe of right-wing allies. Last week, Trump said he was willing to essentially write a blank check to pay for his vision of immigration enforcement.
“There is no price tag,” he told NBC News on Thursday. “When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
Homan agrees. “What price do you put on national security?” he asked Cecilia Vega of CBS News last month when asked about the expected cost of mass deportations.