Who is Tom Homan, the man Trump appointed to oversee the border?

President-elect Trump is already forming his cabinet, with numerous announcements of names and positions. One of the first names revealed was that of the man who would take charge of the border.

Tom Homan will be in charge of making Mr. Trump's mass deportation proposal a reality. Immigration was one of the Republican campaign's most significant issues.

Mr. Homan is a Trump loyalist. According to NPR and the Wall Street Journal, he has routinely praised the President-elect's border policies, qualifying them as the most secure in US history.

He has worked in law enforcement for over three decades, NPR explained, serving in different roles under six presidents. He was the director of ICE during a part of the Trump administration.

Mr. Homan retired in 2018 after the Senate refused to confirm his nomination. During his years in law enforcement and after, he championed controversial policies.

According to the Wall Street Journal, he joined the Heritage Foundation in 2022 and is one of the signers of the controversial Project 2025 to reshape the executive branch.

Mr. Trump distanced himself from the plan during the campaign despite many of his former administration officials signing it. Now, Mr. Homan is an example of a signer in the new administration.

Still, Project 2025 is not the only controversial policy with Mr. Homan's signature. According to the Wall Street Journal, he was the border family-separation policy architect.

The newspaper said he proposed it during the Obama administration as an executive associate director in ICE. Still, the policy was rejected until Mr. Trump took office.

The policy lasted only a few months as it received backlash from international and national organizations, activists, and even Republican lawmakers.

Still, just a few weeks were enough to inflict severe damage. NPR said more than 5000 children were separated from their families as their parents were arrested.

According to the broadcaster, the Department of Homeland Security said there were still 1,401 children separated from their families in 2024, more than 5 years after the policy ended.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Homan said Mr. Trump needs to consider reviving the family separation policy in this new term. He has also suggested families could be deported together.

That option is more complicated than it sounds; many immigrants entered the country several years ago, and their children are US citizens who cannot be legally deported.

Aside from family separation, Mr. Homan has promised to start the "biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen," NPR reported. He confirmed it will include workplace raids.

The priorities of immigration agents will change to focus on every undocumented immigrant and not only on people with dangerous or wide criminal records, as the Biden administration proposed.

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