Trump announces immigration official Tom Homan as ‘border czar’

Hardline immigration official Tom Homan will be in charge of overseeing the United States’s borders in the incoming Republican administration, President-elect Donald Trump has said.

“I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation’s Borders [‘The Border Czar’],” Trump posted on his social network Truth Social late on Sunday.

“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” he wrote, adding that Homan will be in charge of “all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin”.

Such a role does not require confirmation from the US Senate.

Trump, 78, has pledged to launch – on day one of his presidency – the largest deportation operation of undocumented migrants in US history. Trump, who never conceded his 2020 loss, sealed a remarkable comeback to the presidency in the November 5 vote.

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

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

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

While the US government has struggled for years to manage its southern border with Mexico, Trump has claimed an “invasion” is under way by migrants who he says will “rape and murder” Americans.

In rally speeches, he exaggerated local tensions and misled his audiences about immigration statistics and policy. Violent crime, which spiked under Trump, has fallen in every year of President Joe Biden’s administration, though 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 undocumented workers pay taxes that contribute to social programmes that they themselves are unable to access.

The number of US border patrol encounters with migrants crossing over from Mexico “illegally” is now about the same as in 2020, the last year of Trump’s presidency, after peaking at a record 250,000 for the month of December 2023.

Trump promised to tackle migrant gangs using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – which allows the federal government to round up and deport foreigners belonging to enemy countries – as part of a mass deportation drive he christened “Operation Aurora”.

Aurora was the scene of a viral video showing armed Latinos rampaging through an apartment block that spurred sweeping, false narratives about the town under attack by Latin American migrants. Trump has similarly promoted the fictitious story that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating residents’ pets.

Experts warn that the fevered rhetoric around immigration could worsen a humanitarian crisis at the border and make it easier to justify harsh policies. Last year, the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations entity, named the journey across the US-Mexico border the “deadliest land route for migrants worldwide on record”.

In an interview on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures, Homan said the US military would not be rounding up and arresting immigrants in the country illegally and that ICE would move to implement Trump’s plans in a “humane manner”.

“It’s going to be a well-targeted, planned operation conducted by the men of ICE. The men and women of ICE do this daily. They’re good at it,” he said. “When we go out there, we’re going to know who we’re looking for. We most likely know where they’re going to be, and it’s going to be done in a humane manner.”

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

“Wait until 2025,” he said, adding that, while he thinks the government needed to prioritise national security threats, “no one’s off the table”.

“If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder,” he said. “You’ve got my word. Trump comes back in January, I will be in his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

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Al Jazeera and news agencies