Tom Homan, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be his incoming administration’s “border czar,” is a veteran immigration official and immigration hawk whose law enforcement career spans decades.
Once a police officer in New York state and Border Patrol agent, the Obama administration tapped him to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation branch in 2013. During Homan’s time at ICE under President Obama, the agency carried out record numbers of formal deportations. Obama gave Homan a Presidential Rank Award, the highest civil service recognition.
Trump early in his first term named Homan acting director of ICE. He quickly generated controversy when he suggested undocumented immigrants “should be afraid” under the Trump administration.
Homan was one of the masterminds of the first Trump administration’s infamous “zero tolerance” policy, which led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents.
The parents were prosecuted for illegal entry, while the children were sent to shelters for unaccompanied minors — without a plan to reunite them.
He was one of the three officials who signed the policy memo that then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen approved to greenlight the separations. He left ICE in June 2018.