Final week, whereas showing on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast, the president-elect’s son requested incoming “border czar” Tom Homan what border and immigration-related motion the general public can anticipate to see on Day 1 of the brand new Trump administration.
“Shock and awe,” Homan responded. “Shock and awe,” he repeated with a smile.
Homan, who served because the performing head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the course of the first Trump administration, has advised he is been ready greater than two years for this second.
At a public occasion final yr, he recounted how, over dinner in Las Vegas in the course of 2022 — a number of months earlier than former President Donald Trump introduced his reelection bid — Trump confided in Homan that he was going to run for the White Home once more and requested if he might rely on Homan to return with him.
As Homan recalled, he advised Trump, “I am going to let you know what, sir, I am so pissed off I am going to come again free of charge.”
Within the two years since then, Homan has used media appearances, public boards and even a nonprofit charity he launched to make his case for a return to Trump’s aggressive strategy to frame safety and immigration enforcement, usually wielding private tales, authorities statistics and cruel rhetoric to warn that violent criminals, potential terrorists and different main threats are streaming throughout the border.
In response to Homan, present immigration insurance policies are “nationwide suicide,” President Joe Biden is “treasonous,” and “one thing is coming.” Homan’s critics have known as his views “merciless” and “chilly.”
Migrants run to cover from the Border Patrol and the Texas Nationwide Guard after crossing into america from Mexico, in El Paso, Texas, Could 8, 2023.
Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters, FILE
As Homan sees it, he is merely enthusiastic about border safety due to the whole lot he is skilled in his almost 4 many years as a Border Patrol agent and top-level ICE official.
“I am excited. We’re already engaged on these plans,” he mentioned on Trump Jr.’s podcast final week.
However what has Homan mentioned the brand new Trump administration’s border efforts and immigration coverage will truly entail?
This is a complete take a look at what Homan’s public statements have indicated about his doable plans, and why — regardless of his detractors — he insists it is the correct strategy.
‘The largest deportation’
Although numbers began to sluggish this previous yr, underneath the Biden administration, key border-related numbers surged to report ranges, with almost 9 million migrant encounters alongside the southwest border since Biden took workplace, greater than 2 million extra border-crossers reportedly detected however by no means captured, and greater than 300 migrants stopped on the border with names matching recognized or suspected terrorists on a authorities watchlist.
Whereas Homan has promised to execute “the most important deportation operation this nation has ever seen,” he has additionally acknowledged the breadth of that operation largely will depend on how a lot cash Congress offers for it.
With Republicans about to regulate each the Home and Senate, the brand new Trump administration might have vital flexibility to conduct its operation. However “all of it will depend on the sources we’re given,” particularly as a result of an even bigger operation wants extra officers and extra detention beds for these being deported, Homan has mentioned.
“Congress goes to have to present an enormous quantity of detention beds,” he mentioned.
ICE’s present funding permits for lower than 50,000 beds — and although ICE has lengthy relied on privately-run detention services to assist home migrants, that multimillion-dollar enterprise might develop underneath Trump’s anticipated enforcement enlargement.
Homan has mentioned ICE could need to detain some migrants for so long as a number of weeks.
“What individuals do not perceive is we will not simply put [them on] a aircraft,” he mentioned. “There is a course of we’ve to undergo. It’s a must to contact the nation, they need to agree to simply accept them, then they acquired to ship you journey paperwork. And that takes a number of days to a number of weeks. So we want detention belongings.”
To spice up ICE’s ranks, Homan has advised the administration might transfer officers from different businesses to help. And in latest days, Trump has indicated he’ll search assist from the U.S. army by declaring a nationwide emergency, although Trump didn’t supply any particulars. Up to now, members of the Nationwide Guard have been deployed to the border to assist with surveillance or administrative duties — to not make arrests.
“The underside line is: Can Tom Homan take away 10 million individuals in a yr? No. I am not going to misinform you,” Homan mentioned on a podcast final yr. “However we’ll be on the market searching for them [and] once we discover them, take away them.”
Homan has promised a “focused” strategy, at first prioritizing recognized or suspected nationwide safety threats, migrants with prison histories who’re already detained by native regulation enforcement, and “fugitives” who have been already ordered eliminated by a federal decide.
Showing on Fox Information on Monday, Homan mentioned he is touring to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property later this week “to place the ultimate touches on the plan.”
Homan has beforehand vowed no matter they in the end do might be “humane.”
“We are able to do that proper … as a result of we will not lose the religion of the American individuals,” he mentioned.
Homan has additionally mentioned that the Trump administration should end constructing the wall alongside the southwest border and should strain so-called “sanctuary cities” to assist flag prison migrants of their custody.
Youngster separation ‘must be thought-about’
Homan has strongly disputed claims that he created the extremely controversial coverage that separated hundreds of kids from their mother and father in the course of the first Trump administration, when he was performing ICE director.
Nonetheless, he has publicly expressed assist for it, telling CBS Information within the run-up to the election that baby separation “must be thought-about, completely.”
In April 2018, when the primary Trump administration was nonetheless growing its “zero tolerance” strategy to unlawful immigration, Homan and two counterparts in different businesses signed a memo recommending that, amongst different potential measures, the Trump administration ought to severely think about prosecuting “all amenable adults” crossing the border illegally, together with mother and father crossing with their households.
“[It] would doubtless have the simplest impression,” the memo mentioned.
The following month, when then-Legal professional Basic Jeff Periods held a press convention in San Diego to publicly declare that folks who unlawfully introduced their kids throughout the border can be prosecuted and separated from their kids, Homan advised reporters that his division “stands shoulder to shoulder” with Periods.
Nonetheless, on the similar press convention, Homan disputed that the Trump administration had “created new coverage.”
“This has all the time been the coverage,” he mentioned. “Each regulation enforcement company on this nation separates mother and father from their kids once they’re arrested for a criminal offense. … That baby cannot go right into a U.S. [jail].”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement performing director Thomas Homan poses for a portrait in East Level, Ga., April 26, 2018.
John Bazemore/AP, FILE
“The coverage stays the identical, there’s simply going to be extra of what we have been doing,” he mentioned.
A subsequent report from the Justice Division’s inspector common concluded that Periods “was a driving power within the DHS determination to start referring household unit adults for prosecution,” and that what he pushed created a change in “DHS follow” courting again to not less than 1992.
Over simply two months in 2018, greater than 3,000 kids have been separated from their households, “and points concerning reuniting kids with a mother or father stay,” mentioned the report, issued in January 2021, almost three years after the “zero tolerance” coverage was applied.
The coverage sparked a world uproar, with a few of its most ardent critics saying it amounted to “torture carried out within the identify of the American individuals.” Media experiences captured the trauma suffered by kids who have been taken from their mother and father. Below such strain, then-President Trump in the end reversed the coverage.
In his 2020 memoir, Homan wrote that regardless of “the screaming” over the Trump administration’s strategy, “in the course of the few weeks the zero-tolerance coverage was truly enforced, unlawful crossings on the Rio Grande Valley went down over 20 p.c.”
“What number of girls have been saved from exploitation? What number of youngsters weren’t abused or killed by coyotes? What number of unhealthy guys did we forestall from getting into our communities? We’ll by no means know the precise quantity, however we made a distinction,” Homan wrote.
Pressed by CBS Information final month about whether or not household separations will occur underneath Trump’s subsequent administration, Homan mentioned one option to keep away from them is to deport kids and their mother and father — “Households might be deported collectively,” he mentioned.
Finish ‘catch and launch’
By the point Trump took workplace in 2017, the federal government’s restricted capability to detain migrants made it widespread follow for U.S. authorities to launch nonviolent border-crossers claiming asylum into america whereas they waited for his or her circumstances to be heard by a decide — a follow that has turn out to be often known as “catch and launch.”
However a backlog of circumstances, pushed by a scarcity of immigration courtroom judges, has meant that after being launched, asylum circumstances can take years to resolve, with no assure that migrants will truly present up in courtroom or depart voluntarily in the event that they lose their circumstances.
Whereas the primary Trump administration took steps to restrict “catch and launch,” the follow has expanded underneath the Biden administration because it’s confronted an unprecedented inflow of migrants.
“Finish catch and launch, that should occur Day One,” Homan mentioned final week of Trump’s second time period. “As a result of in case you finish ‘catch and launch,’ they’re going to cease coming.”
As an instance how migrants are exploiting the follow, Homan has usually pointed to authorities knowledge exhibiting that, as he places it, “almost 9 out of ten by no means get aid from the U.S. courts as a result of they do not qualify” for asylum. He has mentioned these 9 out of 10 asylum-seekers are “committing fraud.”
However the statistics are difficult: As an alternative of exhibiting that 9 out of 10 asylum claims in courtroom are denied, they present that a good portion of asylum claims are by no means formally filed with an utility, are deserted, or are derailed in courtroom for different unclear causes. Below the Biden administration, extra asylum claims have truly been granted in courtroom than explicitly denied.
However, Homan has lengthy mentioned that anybody with a official declare of asylum should not attempt to enter the nation by way of a desert or throughout a river — they need to go to an official port of entry.
“If in case you have a transparent declare to asylum, go to the port of entry the place you are protected,” he mentioned on the Could 2018 press convention in San Diego. “This is not nearly regulation enforcement, that is about saving lives.”
In response to Homan, a part of ending “catch and launch” is reinstating the “Stay in Mexico” program launched underneath the primary Trump administration, which blocked asylum seekers on the southwest border from getting into america whereas their asylum circumstances have been pending.
On Trump Jr.’s podcast final week, Homan mentioned he believes that pushed migrants to cease coming, “and so the ‘Stay in Mexico’ program needs to be put again in place.”
Finish birthright citizenship and ‘chain migration’
In a marketing campaign video final yr, Trump mentioned that “on Day 1 of my new time period in workplace,” he’ll finish the court-backed custom of birthright citizenship, which for hundreds of years has mechanically bestowed U.S. citizenship to anybody born inside america, no matter their mother and father’ standing.
Trump advised the follow stems from “a historic fantasy and a willful misinterpretation” of the Fourteenth Modification to the Structure, which states that, “All individuals born or naturalized in america, and topic to the jurisdiction thereof, are residents of america.”
“As a part of my plan to safe the border,” Trump mentioned within the marketing campaign video, “I’ll signal an govt order making clear to federal businesses that underneath the right interpretation of the regulation, going ahead the longer term kids of unlawful aliens won’t obtain computerized U.S. citizenship.”
“My coverage will choke off a significant incentive for continued unlawful immigration,” he added.
Homan has echoed that sentiment, saying on a podcast final yr, “One factor that we’ll have this president do … [is] finish birthright citizenship.”
Each Homan and Trump have mentioned ending birthright citizenship may even put an finish to so-called “start tourism,” when pregnant girls from abroad journey to america to allow them to give start on U.S. soil and guarantee their new baby is granted U.S. citizenship.
In his marketing campaign video, Trump mentioned his Day 1 govt order will finish that “unfair follow” and, based on him, its abuse by mother and father who then “leap the road and get inexperienced playing cards for themselves and their members of the family” — a part of a follow often known as “chain migration.”
In his 2020 guide, entitled “Defend the Border and Save Lives,” Homan mentioned “chain migration” results in an “uncontrollable improve in authorized immigration.” However he supported “chain migration” for spouses and youngsters, writing, “The household family is the constructing block of our society, and we should assist insurance policies that preserve this unit intact.”
In final yr’s marketing campaign video, Trump mentioned his govt order will stipulate that not less than one mother or father of a U.S. citizen baby should be a citizen or authorized everlasting resident themselves to ensure that the remainder of the household to qualify for immigration advantages.
‘Worksite operations need to occur’
A part of Homan’s strategy is to discourage employers from hiring undocumented immigrants within the first place.
Throughout a latest look on Fox Information, he mentioned “worksite operations need to occur,” significantly as a result of — based on him — so many undocumented immigrants discovered at focused worksites have been both sex-trafficked or pressured into labor.
However he has additionally mentioned that employers ought to be legally required to make use of E-Confirm, a web-based U.S. authorities system that permits employers to verify the employment eligibility of their staff.
All federal contractors and distributors are required to make use of it, and several other states require each employer inside the state to make use of it — however throughout the nation E-Confirm continues to be a largely voluntary program.
As Homan describes it, broader utilization of the system would assist diminish a big driver of unlawful migration by making it tougher for undocumented immigrants to search out work. “We acquired to determine E-Confirm to allow them to’t get a job as simple,” he mentioned on a podcast final yr.
Homan has acknowledged that important elements of the U.S. financial system like farming, building and meatpacking usually depend on undocumented employees — “however that is a silly purpose to not implement our legal guidelines,” he wrote in his 2020 guide.
However, Homan has mentioned that the U.S. authorities — whereas nonetheless implementing immigration legal guidelines — must also broaden present applications or set up new ones that might permit extra immigrants to work contained in the nation briefly
“If there are jobs up right here that we want these individuals for, then create a program, and produce them in legally,” he advised WWNY-TV in Watertown, New York, final week. “That manner they are not paying the prison cartels, they are not swimming throughout the river. … I a lot favor that than individuals getting into illegally, as a result of it is a harmful factor to do.”
Border safety ‘with the stroke of a pen’
As Homan makes plans to get to work on Day 1 of a brand new Trump administration, a number of sources conversant in the matter have advised ABC Information that govt orders might be a considerable a part of the strategy.
“If you wish to safe the border, do it with the stroke of a pen, identical to President Trump did,” Homan mentioned on a podcast earlier this yr, referring to govt actions taken in Trump’s first time period.
A minimum of among the measures Homan has advocated could possibly be superior by way of govt orders.
On a podcast in February, Homan mentioned he is additionally “going to push” for both an govt order or new laws that “clearly” bans somebody who disobeys a decide’s deportation order from ever receiving any type of future authorized immigration standing.
“If after due course of you’ve got been ordered eliminated by a federal decide, and you do not depart, you’ll by no means qualify for an additional immigration profit the remainder of your life,” Homan mentioned — including that the proposal might even ban them from getting a vacationer visa.
“If that was truly in impact, lots of people would go away on their very own as a result of lots of them have U.S. citizen kids,” and so they do not need to rule out having the ability to return to america sometime, the previous ICE official mentioned.
“Large issues are coming within the weeks forward,” Homan wrote on X this previous week.
