Tom Homan will speak at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July. Trump announced Sunday that the former acting ICE director will oversee border enforcement in his second administration.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

President-elect Trump announced Sunday evening that Tom Homan, his former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will join his second administration to oversee border security.

In his role as “border czar” — which does not require Senate confirmation — Homan will be in charge of the U.S. southern and northern borders, as well as “all maritime and aviation security,” Trump said in his post on Truth Social.

“Similarly, Tom Homan will be in charge of all deportations of illegal aliens back to their countries of origin,” Trump wrote, adding that “there is no one better at policing and controlling our borders.”

It is unclear what role Homan will play, as managing immigration requires coordination among several agencies under the Department of Homeland Security.

Homan, a former police officer and Border Patrol agent, worked under six presidents during his three decades in law enforcement — and has repeatedly praised Trump for being the one who did the most to secure the border.

Sunday’s announcement was largely expected, as Trump had said last summer that he would call on Homan to help oversee immigration policy in his potential second term. Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in July, Homan told undocumented immigrants to “wait until 2025,” adding, “If you’re here illegally, you better look over your shoulder.”

“Trump will be back in January,” Homen said. ‘I’ll be hot on his heels when I get back. And I will lead the largest deportation operation this country has ever seen.”

Homan supported Trump’s controversial family separation policy

Homan was the face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration during his tenure as acting director of ICE from January 2017 to June 2018.

During that time, he often appeared at White House press conferences to personally defend his agents’ arrests of undocumented immigrants and call for stronger enforcement, according to CNN, and praised Trump for letting ICE “throw off the shackles” had taken’ by allowing officers to create a broader approach. range of arrests.

Notably, Homan was one of the architects behind the controversial family separation policy. More than 5,500 immigrant children were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 under the administration’s short-lived “Zero Tolerance” policy. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there were still 1,401 children without confirmed reunification in April.

Trump signed an executive order halting family separations in June 2018 after much condemnation from lawmakers and the public, and the Biden administration officially rescinded it just days after he took office in 2021.

Homan retired in 2018 in frustration when the White House failed to move his nomination toward Senate confirmation, according to The Washington Post WashingtonPost. He became a contributor to Fox News, joined the conservative Heritage Foundation as a visiting scholar and contributed to Project 2025, the controversial blueprint for reforming the federal government..

Trump had tried to distance himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, even though it overlapped with his own agenda. Trump has made immigration a key part of his campaign, promising to deport millions of immigrants found in the country without permission.

Homan has warned undocumented immigrants to ‘start packing’

Homan spoke in an interview on Fox about how such deportations would work Futures on Sunday morning hours before his appointment was announced, he said it would be a “well-targeted, planned operation, carried out … by the men of ICE.”

“If we go there, we will know who we are looking for, we will most likely know where they will be and it will be done in a humane manner,” Homan said, adding that it will focus on the “Threats to public safety and first the threats to national security.”

But those groups won’t be the only targets, Homan told CBS. 60 minutes last month. He said he would restart workplace enforcement after the Biden administration moved away from the controversial practice of mass immigration raids on workplaces in favor of pursuing “exploitative employers.” He also said in that interview that “families could be deported together,” suggesting that children who are U.S. citizens but have undocumented parents should go with them.

Months earlier, Homan said on stage at the Republican National Convention that Trump would designate the Mexican cartels as a “terrorist organization” for their role in getting fentanyl across the border, warning: “He’s going to wipe you off the face of the earth.” ‘

However, according to data from the US Sentencing Commission, the vast majority of fentanyl traffickers are US citizens.

He also addressed undocumented immigrants in general, whom he said Biden released into the country against federal law.

“You better start packing now,” he said, as attendees cheered with pro-deportation signs. “Because you’re going home.”

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals, while clearly a winning issue with voters, are not met without opposition.

In the days since Trump’s election, immigrant rights groups have said they are ready to challenge his anti-migrant policies through protests, local legislation and lawsuits. And analysts at the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute and the Niskanen Center predict that lower — possibly even negative — net migration to the U.S. would hurt the country’s economy, as NPR has reported.

Homan is not the only appointee Trump has named for his upcoming term. He announced last week that Susie Wiles will become his chief of staff.

On Monday, Trump tapped Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican and chair of the House Republican Conference, to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The role would require Senate confirmation, which is all but guaranteed in the soon-to-be Republican-controlled chamber.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán contributed to this report.