By JILL COLVIN and REBECCA SANTANA

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says Tom Homan, his former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will serve as “border czar” in his new administration, a position likely to play a key role in Trump’s campaign promises Trump to secure the US-Mexico border and launch a mass deportation operation.

“I am pleased to announce that former ICE director and longtime Border Patrol stalwart Tom Homan will be joining the Trump administration in charge of the nation’s borders,” he wrote late Sunday on his Truth Social site.

In addition to overseeing the southern and northern borders and “maritime and aviation security,” Trump said Homan “will be responsible for all deportations of illegal aliens back to their countries of origin,” a central part of his agenda.

He said he had “no doubt” that Homan “will do a fantastic, long-awaited job.”

Homan is a tough former Border Patrol agent who worked his way up to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement as acting director in 2017 and 2018. He has never been confirmed by the Senate, nor does his new role require it.

Including him shows the lengths to which the Trump administration is likely to go to implement the tough immigration promises that characterized the campaign. However, Homan has also pushed back on rhetoric suggesting mass roundups are underway.

At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington earlier this year, Homan said that while he believes the government should prioritize threats to national security, “no one is off the table. If you are here illegally, you better look over your shoulder.”

He also 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.”

However, he said in recent interviews that the targets — at least initially — would be people who pose a risk to public safety and pushed back on suggestions that the U.S. military would help find and deport immigrants.

“You focus first on the threats to public safety and the threats to national security because those are the worst of the worst,” he said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” He also said ICE would take steps to implement 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.

During a “60 Minutes” interview before the election, Homan called suggestions for mass neighborhood raids or building camps to keep people “ridiculous.”

When asked if there was a way to carry out deportations without separating families, he said: “Families can be deported together.” He also said workplace immigration enforcement operations — which the Biden administration has largely halted — would be “necessary.”

Gil Kerlikowske, who knows Homan from when Kerlikowske led U.S. Customs and Border Protection under then-President Barack Obama, said Homan likely got the job because he has been a strong, outspoken supporter of Trump since his term in office and knows how the border and immigration work.

He added that unlike other figures such as Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner who has also been tapped for a top White House job, Homan’s decades in immigration jobs mean he knows the difficulties associated with launching a mass deportation operation.

“Tom has a lot more knowledge about what can be done and what is practical,” Kerlikowske said.

Trump has long vowed mass deportations of people living in the country illegally, but logistical and financial challenges make that difficult to carry out.

ICE has approximately 41,500 detention beds at any given time, and countries must agree to take back their citizens, which is not always a given, especially for those with whom the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations, such as Venezuela.

Obama carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the highest annual total since records began being kept. The number of deportations under Trump never exceeded 350,000.

Homan began his career in 1984 as a Border Patrol agent before moving to ICE. He was a relatively low-key but influential figure in immigration enforcement in the Obama administration, leading ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division – charged with tracking down people who have no right to be in the country and bringing them to justice. to delete.

During his first administration, Trump scrapped Obama-era policies that limited deportations to people who posed a threat to public safety, convicted criminals and those who have recently crossed the border, effectively making anyone without legal status open to arrest .

During that time, Homan presided over a 40% increase in deportation arrests and instituted policies to conduct immigration arrests at courthouses and detain pregnant women.

He was also a key figure in charge of immigration when the Trump administration launched its zero-tolerance policy, separating migrant parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

When Homan retired as acting head of ICE, he said he wanted to spend more time with his family. In a 2018 interview with the AP, he said he had no intention of staying in the Trump administration but did so after then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly asked him to stay. Homan said he was at his own retirement party when he got the request. Kelly gave him a weekend to decide, and he accepted.

After Homan resigned, it appeared he might return when Trump said in 2019 he wanted to bring Homan back as “border czar.”

Homan said the announcement was premature. The reason he gave at the time may provide some insight into how he believes the position of “border czar” should function this time.

“I think any kind of border czar has to be someone who coordinates a whole-of-government response to the border,” adding, “That was not the way it was set up,” he told Fox News at the time.

After leaving the Trump administration, Homan wrote a book titled “Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving our Most Humanitarian and Security Crisis” and was a frequent guest on Fox News.

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Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

Originally published: November 10, 2024 at 11:44 PM EST