Tough immigration official Tom Homan will be responsible for overseeing the United States’ borders in the next Republican administration, President-elect Donald Trump has said.

“I am pleased to announce that former ICE Director and Border Patrol stalwart, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration in charge of our nation’s borders (‘The Border Czar’),” posted Trump on his social network Truth. Social late on Sundays.

“I have known Tom for a long time, and there is no one better at guarding and controlling our borders,” he wrote, adding that Homan will be in charge of “all deportations of illegal aliens back to their countries of origin.”

Such a role does not require U.S. Senate confirmation.

Trump, 78, has pledged — on the first day of his presidency — to launch the largest deportation operation of undocumented migrants in U.S. history. Trump, who never conceded his 2020 loss, sealed a remarkable comeback as president during the Nov. 5 vote.

In 2017, when Homan was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first administration, the number of immigrants arrested increased by nearly 40 percent compared to the previous year.

The belief that there are no barriers to people entering the country has been a central part of the Trump campaign — rhetoric that portrays immigrants as criminals and a drain on the country’s resources.

“The day after I take office, the migrant invasion will end,” Trump said last week at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he described migrants as “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals” and vowed to “get them out of the country.” kick’.

As the US government has struggled for years to manage the southern border with Mexico, Trump has claimed there is an “invasion” by migrants who he says will “rape and kill” Americans.

In rally speeches, he exaggerated local tensions and misled his audience about immigration statistics and policies. Violent crime, which spiked under Trump, has fallen in each year of President Joe Biden’s administration, although foreign suspects have been named in a few high-profile cases of violent attacks on women and children.

Yet research shows that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes, and that undocumented workers pay taxes that contribute to social programs they cannot access.

The number of encounters with U.S. border patrols involving migrants crossing “illegally” from Mexico is now about the same as in 2020, the final year of Trump’s presidency, after peaking at 250,000 for the month of December 2023.

Trump vowed to crack down on migrant gangs using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — which allows the federal government to round up and deport foreigners from enemy countries — as part of a mass deportation he dubbed “Operation Aurora.”

Aurora was the scene of a viral video showing armed Latinos rampaging through an apartment building, leading to sweeping false stories about the city being attacked by Latin American migrants. Trump has similarly promoted the fictional story that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating residents’ pets.

Experts warn that the feverish rhetoric surrounding immigration could worsen a humanitarian crisis at the border and make it easier to justify tough policies. Last year, the International Organization for Migration, an entity of the United Nations, called the journey across the US-Mexico border the “deadliest ever land route for migrants worldwide.”

In an interview on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures, Homan said the U.S. military would not round up and arrest immigrants in the country illegally and that ICE would take action to carry out Trump’s plans in a “humane manner.”

‘It will be a targeted, planned operation, carried out by the men of ICE. The men and women of ICE do this every day. They are good at it,” he said. “When we go there, we’ll know who we’re looking for. We most likely know where they will be, and it will be done in a humane manner.”

Earlier this year, Homan expressed his frustration at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington DC over reports of a mass deportation operation.

“Wait until 2025,” he said, adding that while he believes the government should prioritize national security threats, “no one is off the table.”

“If you’re here illegally, you better look over your shoulder,” he said. ‘You have my word. Trump is coming back in January, I will be on his heels and I will lead the largest deportation operation this country has ever seen.”