Tom Homan, the architect behind some of the Trump administration’s most controversial immigration policies, has emerged from retirement with an even more extreme vision for his role as Trump’s newly-announced “border czar.”
People are already pointing their fingers at Trump voters for the probable calamity and malfeasance.
“You brought this on yourselves, you f****** idiots,” wrote @AesPolitics1 in a tweet. You never should have let Trump win. Now we get this monster back because of you.” The former acting ICE director, who helped implement the 2018 family separation policy that tore over 5,500 children from their parents, now proposes an equally chilling approach: deporting entire families together, including those with U.S. citizen children.
“Families can be deported together,” Homan told CBS’s 60 Minutes, revealing plans that would force American-born children to leave with their undocumented parents. The veteran law enforcement officer, who rose from small-town police work to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stands ready to execute what Trump promises will be “the largest deportation operation in American history.”
While Homan insists there won’t be “mass sweeps of neighborhoods” or “concentration camps,” which he insists is foolishness, his operational blueprint includes reviving workplace raids and deploying what he calls “targeted arrests”—tactics that previously terrorized immigrant communities under his watch.
At July’s Republican National Convention, Homan’s message to undocumented immigrants crystallized the administration’s stance: “You better start packing now.”
Homan’s appointment signals an even harsher approach than his 2017-2018 tenure as ICE director when he wasted no time implementing Trump’s directive to “take the shackles off” immigration enforcement. Now empowered to oversee all border control, maritime, and aviation security operations—and with an increasingly friendly legislative and judicial system at his disposal—Homan’s expanded authority raises alarms about the human cost of renewed and likely sweeping deportation efforts.
While Homan claims he’ll prioritize “public safety threats and national security threats first,” his acknowledgment that enforcement won’t stop there has immigrant advocates bracing for widespread family separations—this time through mass deportation rather than border detention. For those who were single-issue voters, what is likely coming will provide a lesson.
The immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory has already exposed fissures among his Latino supporters, who helped deliver key swing states. Camille Rivera, founder of Puerto Rican PAC La Brega y Fuerza, reported receiving numerous calls from Latino voters desperately trying to change their Trump votes in the final days before the election. “For two or three years, we’ve been asking Democratic institutions to provide resources. By the time they responded, many people had already voted,” Rivera told reporters.
The shift among Latino men proved particularly decisive—exit polls showed a dramatic 42-point swing toward Trump since 2016, despite his increasingly harsh rhetoric on immigration. But as deportation plans materialize, some Trump (including possibly Latinos) voters are already experiencing buyer’s remorse. Election Day saw Google searches for “how to change my vote” spike to their highest levels in Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, and Alabama—all states Trump won handily. For a nation still grappling with the trauma of children in cages, Homan’s return portends the redux of a dark chapter in America’s immigration story—one that voters chose when they elevated Trump back to power.
Published: Nov 12, 2024 11:07 am