Tom Homan takes to conservative media to outline Trump's plan for mass deportations

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to serve in top jobs in his next administration have generally stayed off the airwaves to avoid any verbal slipups that might jeopardize their chances at getting confirmed by the Senate. 

Not so with Tom Homan.

Homan, who was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term in office, has been tapped to be the new White House “border czar.” The job does not require Senate confirmation, meaning Homan has the freedom to go on cable news and conservative media and promote Trump’s agenda. 

A former border patrol agent, Homan   led ICE   during the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy, which was widely criticized for its family separations.

In the past month, he has done at least 20 interviews, which have all been reviewed by NBC News. Tasked with coordinating Trump’s core campaign promise of a mass deportation, Homan has used the appearances to begin detailing how the efforts might take shape and how the administration will move its plan forward. While they are far from painting a complete picture, the interviews have given more specifics than have been offered about the deportation policy in the past. 

Representatives for Trump’s transition did not respond to a request for comment about Homan’s interviews.

Using the U.S. military to help with mass deportation

Over the course of the election, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, often faced questions about how Trump’s future administration would implement and fund a deportation program seeking to repatriate potentially millions of undocumented migrants but regularly offered few details. 

Homan, who was frequently asked during his appearances to explain how and with whom the repatriations will begin, echoes one of the few details of the plan that Trump has offered publicly himself: The deportations will begin with undocumented migrants who pose threats to either national or public security. 

“President Trump has made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first and that’s what the focus would be,” Homan said of the deportation plan in an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity” program on Nov. 11. “There’s thousands of gang members, illegal alien gang members we’re going to be looking for. Now, I’m going to say if you’re in the country illegally, you shouldn’t feel comfortable, absolutely not. I won’t feel comfortable.”

“We have ways of finding people,” he said in a separate interview on the network’s “Ingraham Angle” on Nov. 20. “I’m not going to explain it here on national TV because of law enforcement sensitivity, but we will find many of these folks. They will be arrested, they’ll be detained, and they will be removed.” 

One area in which Homan has expanded on how the operations will work, is how the military might be enlisted to add manpower to the operation. 

Using the military domestically that way would be a significant step — one that two Democratic senators recently warned against   in a letter   to President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asking the administration to issue a policy directive before Biden leaves office that would require state or local officials to request assistance before federal military forces are deployed. (Trump could overturn the directive once he is back in office.) 

During the campaign, Trump suggested that his administration could use the military for the deportations, and he has considered moving U.S. troops from overseas to station them at the southern border. Homan has not been as direct as Trump has about how he sees the military’s role in the operation he will oversee. 

In an appearance on SiriusXM’s “The David Webb Show” on Nov. 12, Homan said he sees the potential role of service members as most helpful with tasks that do not require explicit immigration authority. 

The Defense Department “has helped several administrations on the border. They could be a force multiplier,” Homan said. The military, he continued, “could be used to help relieve law enforcement officers from administrative duties so they can get on the street and do what they’re supposed to be doing.” 

“For instance, DOD could help with transportation. They could help ground transportation; they could help with air flights out. They can help with infrastructure building. They could help with intelligence, things that don’t require immigration authority. So if DOD can help me, great,” he said. 

Leaning on that logic, Homan has also suggested that the administration will contract out work that does not require law enforcement credentials, like administrative duties or transportation services. 

“But my plan is, and I’ve been very vocal about this, we’re going to contract as much work out as we can, work that doesn’t require a badge and a gun, because I need badges and guns on the street to do the deportation operation,” Homan said Nov. 29 on Fox News.

The contracting could include help from the private sector, too, he has suggested. 

“I’ve been meeting with these tech companies the last couple weeks to find out what’s the latest and brightest technology available, so we’re already working on that plan,” he said in a podcast interview with Phil McGraw, the media personality known as Dr. Phil, which was published Tuesday. 

Later in the same interview, he told McGraw that the federal government will also set up a phone line for members of the public to alert immigration authorities to undocumented people in their communities. 

“I’m hoping people start calling ICE and reporting because we have millions of people in this country that can be forced multipliers for us if they just call us with information,” he said. 

Funding mass deportation

A major outstanding question, however, remains how the incoming Trump administration would fund a deportation scheme at that large a scale. Homan, who will have no official authority over how much funding he will have for his efforts, has said that Trump has pledged the financial support needed to execute on his promise but that funding would most likely have to come from Congress for a long-term operation. 

“Well, $86 billion is the minimum,” Homan said Sunday about the cost of the deportation on Fox Business’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” noting that the administration would need an assist from Congress for the funding.  

“This operation is going to be expensive to begin with, but in the long run, there’s going to be huge tax savings for the American taxpayer,” he added, without providing further details about how exactly the funding would be spent or distributed to federal and local agencies or whether allies in Congress have assured the incoming administration that the sum is feasible. 

“We have to, because we’ve got to have the resources to do the job,” Homan said of working with Congress to secure the proper funding in another interview on Fox News on Nov. 18. “There’s a lot of ‘what-ifs.’ I don’t know what the current budget is right now. I don’t have insight into what currently ICE and CBP have for budget. How much money can be reprogrammed? I can tell you this, President Trump is committed to whatever he can to get us the money we need.” (CBP is Customs and Border Protection.)

Cooperation (or lack thereof) with local officials

Given the immense scope of the operation Trump seeks, Homan has expressed a need for support from local authorities to carry out their immigration plans. With weeks still to go until Trump enters the White House once again, however, several Democratic leaders have already   signaled their intention to resist and inhibit   agencies like ICE from operating within their jurisdictions.

As Homan has often been pressed in his appearances on television to respond to those promises of non-cooperation, a pattern has emerged in how he signals the administration will handle resistance: promises to ramp up deportation efforts in the face of opposition and threats of consequences, including prosecution, for those who impede the administration’s efforts. 

“Law enforcement should work with law enforcement,” Homan said in an interview on Fox News on Nov. 11, the morning after   Trump announced his appointment   on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“I’ve seen some of these Democratic governors say they’re going to stand in the way. They’re going to make it hard for us. A suggestion: If you’re not going to help us, get the hell out of the way, because we’re going to do it,” he said.

The potential for lack of cooperation, Homan often says, will only force the agencies he will oversee to double down on their efforts to identify and deport undocumented migrants. 

“Here’s the thing: They don’t let us in the county jail to arrest a bad guy, which means they’re going to release the bad guy back in the community,” he said on Jesse Watters’ Fox News prime-time show eight days later. 

“So what they’re saying is going to force us into neighborhoods to arrest more illegal aliens than what we originally planned to do. So their idea just — it’s ridiculous.” 

In his most pointed comments to detractors, Homan has gone as far as to suggest that Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, could prosecute those who impede their efforts. 

“It is a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien from immigration authorities. It’s a felony to impede a law enforcement officer in the performance of their duties. Don’t cross that line, because there will be consequences, and thank God we got a strong attorney general coming in. Pam Bondi and I will push those prosecutions,” Homan said Dec. 3 in a prime-time appearance on Fox News. “You can sit there and watch us do it, but do not cross that line. There will be consequences.”

Homan has been getting support from many Republican governors. 

He has made several trips during the transition, including a late-November visit to Eagle Pass, Texas, with Gov. Greg Abbott, who is a staunch Trump ally, particularly on the issue of immigration. That cooperation has included Trump transition officials’ eyeing a piece of land the state recently bought   as a site for new immigration detention centers , according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Homan likewise touts meetings and phone calls with local officials and leaders, particularly along the border and in major cities like New York and Chicago — even as high-ranking as Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino. Homan, for instance, disclosed on Fox News early this month that New York Mayor Eric Adams had directly asked for a meeting. (In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson did not directly confirm Adams had been in contact with Homan but wrote that Adams “has repeatedly said he hopes to work with the incoming Trump administration to improve the lives of New Yorkers.”)

Homan’s in-person meetings have not been limited to local elected leaders, either. On Monday, he traveled to Chicago, where he   spoke before a gathering of local Republicans .

“Chicago is in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks,” Homan said, according to Politico, and he repeated an oft-used line telling officials that those who do not wish to help with the deportations should “get the hell out of the way.”

Before the meeting, in an interview on Fox News, Homan appeared remotely from Chicago, where, he said, he was also set to meet with Black pastors to assuage concerns about what the deportations could do to their communities. 

“We’re not waiting for Jan. 20. I’m working now,” Homan said. 

A brash spokesman for the Trump agenda

Without the threat of a Senate confirmation fight, Homan frequently seems uninhibited — and often brash — in his media appearances. 

“What’s cruel about it?” Homan asked in an interview on “The Ingraham Angle” on Nov. 26 when he was asked to respond to critics who question the ethics of a mass deportation operation. 

Homan, who said in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in the final weeks of the election that mixed-status families “can be deported together,” has also continued to promote that logic in several of his public appearances. 

Trump, who is a noted avid fan of cable television, deployed the same line of reasoning when   NBC News’ “Meet the Press”   moderator Kristen Welker pressed him in an interview about whether he would reinstate the family separation policy from his first term. 

“Well, that way you keep the — well, I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” he said. 

In some of his more animated comments, particularly responding to opponents of the incoming administration’s immigration proposals, Homan has called on elected leaders who have vowed noncooperation to resign for not adequately protecting their constituents. 

“For those governors and mayors who are saying they’re going to stop Tom Homan, they’re going to stop President Trump: Shame on you,” Homan said on Fox News on Nov. 20. 

“And for any governor or mayor who doesn’t want public safety threats taken out of their communities,” he added, “you should resign your office, because your No. 1 responsibility is to protect those communities.”