Trump says Tom Homan will be his ‘border czar’

President-elect Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday that he intends to tap Tom Homan, former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), for the position of “border czar,” FOX News and The New York Times are reporting.

If the Senate confirms his appointment after Mr Trump takes office on January 20, Mr Homan will be in charge of the nation’s borders and maritime and aviation security.

“I’ve been on this network for years complaining about what this administration did to this border. I’ve been yelling and screaming about it and what they need to do to fix it. So when the president asked me, ‘Would you come back and fix it?’ Of course. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t. I’m honored the president asked me to come back and help solve this national security crisis, so I’m looking forward to it,” he told “Fox & Friends” this morning in his first interview since being tapped for the role.

Mr Trump also stated in his post that his pick “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”

Just how he will do that, what his focus will be, and how much it will cost is yet to be determined, but Mr Homan dropped a few hints about his method of choice in a “60 Minutes” interview last month, telling viewers that large-scale worksite raids that could lead to the arrest of unauthorized workers, halted under the Biden administration, could resume under Mr Trump’s second administration.

Mr Homan would bring to the post decades of law enforcement and border security experience. Named acting director of ICE in 2017, he built on decades in immigration enforcement. He was a police officer, a US Border Patrol agent, and a special agent with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Editorial

Having attended medical school at a prestigious school, I view problem solutions like medical treatment. You have your emergency room doctors and your cardiologists. When someone has a heart attack, they need the ER doctor to get their heart beating again moments after the heart attack, and they need a cardiologist to get them back on a healthy track so it doesn’t happen again.

The number of undocumented immigrants residing in the US (and mostly, it can be assumed, working here) has fluctuated over the years, reaching a greatest increase of about 1 million from 2000–2001 and a greatest decrease of about 0.4 million from 2010–2011.

Source: the New York-based Center for Migration Studies

Data from the Center for Migration Studies, a New York-based think tank, show that the total undocumented population in the US increased to about 11.7 million in July 2023, an increase of about 800,000 compared to July 2022. The estimate for 2023 is below the peak of 12 million reached in 2008. After 2008, the population steadily declined, falling to 10 million in 2020. Then the first Trump administration ended.

I see the increase during the Biden administration as a significant change in the trend of undocumented border crossings. Whether that’s a heart attack that needs to be fixed or a symptom of bigger issues in employment opportunities in the US depends on your political persuasion. But Mr Homan is being brought on to defibrillate the southern border. Congress will need to step in to enact meaningful immigration reform, if that’s what the nation wants, acting as a sort of specialist dealing with issues that are more long-term and global in scope.