Ms Ocasio-Cortez is known for her impassioned performances but faltered in the face of Mr Homan’s terse answers and no-nonsense attitude.
While Mr Homan may have been content to put children in cages, he took no prisoners at the committee hearing.
“You want to seek asylum, go through a port of entry,” he said bluntly, unimpressed as Ms Ocasio-Cortez argued that asylum seekers were not criminals. “Do it a legal way.”
Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late on Sunday: “I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our borders.
“Likewise, 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.”
Questions on return of family separation
His return to government raises questions about the return of family separation, with Mr Trump having been reported to have regretted ending the policy in his first term.
Mr Homan told 60 Minutes, a week before being tapped for his latest role, that the US government should “absolutely” consider reinstating the practice.
“I’m sick and tired hearing about the family separation,” he told the Conservative Political Action Conference last year, unrepentant. “You know, I’m still being sued over that, so come get me. I don’t give a s—t, right. Bottom line is, we enforced the law.”
Mr Homan was the “intellectual father” of the policy and had proposed it as far back as 2014, according to The Atlantic. He had been appointed a year before by Barack Obama as executive associate director of immigration enforcement.
Homan investigated deadly human trafficking incident
Although Mr Homan looks and acts like a bulldog, he spent time in therapy after investigating one of the US’s deadliest human trafficking incidents.
In 2003, Mr Homan was sent down to the border in southeast Texas, where he found 17 dead migrants, including a five-year-old, who had been packed like sardines into an overheated lorry.
“I got down on my knees, put my hand on the child’s head, and said a prayer, because I could only imagine what his last hour of life must have been like, how scared he must have been,” he told The Atlantic.
“Couldn’t breathe, pitch black, begging his father to help him. His father couldn’t help. What was his father thinking? He’d put him in that position.”
Child separation was not meant to “traumatise”, he insisted – it was a deterrent to deadly border crossings. “The goal was to stop the madness, stop the death, stop the rape, stop the children dying, stop the cartels doing what they’re doing.”
Mr Homan left the White House the same month that Mr Trump ended family separation, although his departure does not seem to have been connected with the U-turn.
He joined the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and contributed to its Project 2025 policy document. Democrats had claimed that it was a blueprint for a second Trump ter, prompting furious denials from the Republican.