Thomas Homan will be the border czar for the incoming Trump administration. His responsibilities will include the borders with Mexico and Canada, all maritime and aviation security and all deportations.
Fortunately, he is well qualified for these responsibilities. Homan began a career in law enforcement as a police officer, and then spent 34 years enforcing immigration laws. He has been a special agent for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, a border patrol officer for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and an acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The fact that he has spent so many years enforcing the country’s immigration laws does not mean he is anti-immigration. He is anti-illegal immigration.
For instance, he has acknowledged that migrants have a right to due process and a right to claim asylum. He thinks that foreign workers with lawful status should be available to employers who can’t meet their employment needs with American workers.
But Homan is going to enforce the immigration laws that Congress passed. And he is not going to revise them to achieve political objectives the way the previous administration did with its Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law.
These guidelines created a powerful “home free” magnet by prohibiting enforcement proceedings against migrants solely on the basis of their unlawful status. Illegal crossers will keep trying until they succeed as long as they know they will be safe from deportation once they have reached the interior of the country.
However, although Homan will deport migrants who are just here unlawfully, they will not be a priority.
“President Trump made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first,” he has said. “There are more than 1.5 million convicted criminal aliens in this country with orders for removal who we’ll be looking for, there are thousands of gang members we’ll be looking for,” Homan said.
The previous administration had similar priorities — migrants “who pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security” — but it didn’t prioritize their removal if they failed in removal proceedings to establish a lawful basis for remaining in the U.S. In fiscal 2023, it removed only 142,580 of 1,292,830 migrants subject to final deportation orders, and only 72,177 migrants with final deportation orders in fiscal 2022.
The millions of inadmissible migrants the previous administration released into the country will be another priority. Homan’s message to them is, “start packing, because you’re going home.”
Trump will terminate the “parole” programs used to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter and work in the U.S., which will make the participants vulnerable to removal. When their parole status is terminated, they will revert back to the status they had when parole was granted, which generally was that of aliens seeking admission to the U.S.
Moreover, the time limit on asylum applications will make them ineligible for asylum if they didn’t apply within a year of arriving in the U.S. — unless they can establish changed circumstances that materially affect asylum eligibility or show that the delay in filing an application was due to extraordinary circumstances.
Homan will launch a major initiative to locate the unaccompanied immigrant children that ICE had lost track of. Enforcement of this will include worksite raids. “Where do we find most victims of sex-trafficking and forced labor trafficking?” he asks. “At work sites.”
In an Aug. 19, 2024, report, the Homeland Security inspector general said that ICE had transferred 448,000 unaccompanied immigrant children to the Department of Health and Human Services between fiscal 2019 and 2023, and “ICE was not able to account for the location of all [unaccompanied children] who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court.”
The inspector general concluded that, “ICE must take immediate action to ensure the safety of [unaccompanied children] residing in the United States.”
Trump has also promised that millions of undocumented immigrants will be removed from the country during his presidency, and Homan will implement that promise. He intends to run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.
But Homan also has said that his deportation efforts will be targeted. “It’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It’s not going to be building concentration camps.” According to Homan, the scale of the deportations will depend on the availability of officers to carry it out and detention space. “It all depends on what the budget is,” he said.
He will use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to conduct mass deportations of immigrant criminals and gang members, since it permits deportations without individualized notice or a hearing.
The president can invoke this authority with a proclamation “[w]henever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.”
Katherine Yon Ebright from the Brennan Center for Justice says, “There is no plausible basis for saying that migration or narcotics trafficking constitutes an invasion or predatory incursion.” But the political question doctrine might prevent the courts from reviewing a president’s finding that the illegal crossings along the southern border constitute an invasion. This doctrine provides that some issues are so politically charged that federal courts should not adjudicate them.
Trump has claimed that the attempt by millions of inadmissible migrants to enter the United States illegally is the “greatest invasion in history,” and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared an invasion at the southern border to justify his own border enforcement activities.
If this approach fails, Homan will have to resort to removal proceedings before immigration judges. Homan’s enforcement efforts will be opposed. For instance, the ACLU has prepared a roadmap for stopping them. It sued Trump’s administration more than 400 times during his first term in office.
Nevertheless, Trump has a constitutional duty to “take care” that his administration faithfully executes the laws that Congress has passed, and his decision to make Homan the border czar shows that he is serious about doing it.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.