Homan’s appointment does not require approval from the U.S. Senate.
A former director of an immigration enforcement agency will join the second Trump administration as border czar, President-elect Donald Trump said on Nov. 10.
Thomas Homan will be “in charge of our nation’s borders,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
The former president said that there is nobody better at controlling the borders and that Homan, 62, “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”
Border czar is an informal position that does not require approval from the U.S. Senate.
Homan has not yet reacted to the announcement.
He served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency charged with protecting America from illegal immigration, from 2017 through 2018. Most deportations are carried out by ICE, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Some lawmakers praised the selection of Homan, who is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
“Outstanding choice,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote on social media platform X.
Homan has advocated for enforcing federal laws concerning illegal immigration, including deporting people who are illegally in the country.
“When you create a crisis this big, you create a public safety crisis, a public health crisis, and a national security crisis,” Homan told The Epoch Times in 2022.
Trump before and after the recent election has outlined a plan to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
“We have no choice,” he said recently.
Estimates of the illegal immigrant population in the United States range from about 11 million to 21 million.
The number of illegal immigrants crossing the borders has spiked since Trump left office. The Biden administration revoked some Trump-era immigration policies, including the building of the wall at the U.S.–Mexico border, although the president later resumed some wall construction. President Joe Biden also paused deportations for some time, and during his administration, there have been lower levels of deportations than under Trump.
