Donald Trump makes hardliner Homan the “border czar”

US President-elect Donald Trump has decided that he should oversee the announced mass deportation of irregularly immigrated foreigners.

He will take on the role of “border czar” Tom Homan, who led an immigration agency at times during Trump’s first term. This means that Homan will also be responsible for all US borders, Trump wrote on his online platform Truth Social.

Homan was the acting head of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agency in 2017 and 2018. He is considered an advocate of the controversial decision to separate children of illegal immigrants from their parents.

After that, it sometimes took years to reunite the families. Homan – and Trump – later said the measure was intended as a deterrent.

Homan recently caused a stir in an interview. He was asked on the TV show “60 Minutes” whether a mass deportation campaign would be possible without separating families. Homan’s answer: “Of course it works.” Families can be deported together.”

Children born in the USA who are therefore US citizens would then also have to leave the country. His argument was that the parents had immigrated illegally.

Donald Trump made securing the borders and “the largest deportation operation in US history” a central point of his election campaign. According to surveys by the Pew Research Center, there were an estimated eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the United States in 2022.

Some of them have been in the country for decades. According to Pew figures, they belong to around 6.3 million households with a total of more than 22 million people.