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‘We’re Gonna Finish the Job’: Homan Talks Border Control Plans and Motivation

December 20, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar” has some big plans for tackling the illegal immigration crisis that has been allowed to burgeon under the Biden-Harris administration, as well as some very personal reasons for coming out of retirement and joining the second Trump administration. In an interview with Tucker Carlson published this week, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tom Homan addressed what’s gone wrong with the border, what he plans to do about it, and why it matters.

Homan observed that at least 10.5 million illegal immigrants have been encountered at the southern border since outgoing President Joe Biden took office in 2021, and an additional two million have been classified as “gotaways.” He emphasized, “It’s a historic number.” Homan explained that he wakes up “p*ssed off every day” because “we went from the most secure border of my lifetime” to “historic illegal immigration in one administration.”

One crucial issue, Homan noted, is the sheer scale of the illegal immigration crisis. He explained that up to 70% of U.S. Border Patrol agents have been pulled from border duties to attend to “humanitarian” needs, such as tending to apprehended migrant children, preparing or picking up medicines, taking migrants to the hospital when needed, leaving only 30% of Border Patrol agents actually focused on patrolling the border. “When you overwhelm Border Patrol, that’s when all the bad things happen,” Homan explained. He continued, “That’s when we’ve got 2.2 million ‘gotaways,’ that’s when the fentanyl comes across to kill a quarter million Americans, that’s why sex trafficking of women and children is up 600%, that’s why the number of migrant deaths is at a historic high.”

Referring to the illegal immigration crisis as a whole, Homan said, “That’s by design. That’s not mismanagement, it’s by design.”

“Why would anybody open the border up?” Homan asked. He continued, “I think Joe Biden’s the first president in American history who came into office and unsecured the border. I worked for six presidents, [and even] Obama and Clinton took steps to secure the border.” Homan added, “There’s no way you can have strong national security if you don’t have border security. You need to know what’s coming in, who’s coming in, where it’s coming, and why it’s coming in.”

He continued, “Joe Biden’s the first president who came into office and unsecured the border, and people ask me all the time, ‘Why?’ I think they see a future political benefit.” Homan hypothesized that Biden and other Democrats not only see illegal immigrants as potential future Democratic voters but may be using the influx of illegal immigrants to inflate the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that Democrats can then claim. When Trump returns to office, Homan insisted that he needs to change the census rules so that “illegal aliens should not be counted in the census.”

“Who organized this? You say it was by design,” Carlson inquired. Homan said that a number of entities have been involved in facilitating America’s illegal immigration crisis, including non-government organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations. “I think they’re complicit in a lot of this, in illegal immigration,” he said. Homan continued, “I’m counting on the new Congress — which, we now have control of both the House and the Senate — to conduct oversight hearings and hold people accountable. There’s no way, again, there’s no way this is mismanagement or incompetence, this is by design.”

While Homan said that he didn’t know exactly who was responsible for orchestrating the illegal immigration crisis, he did insist that people need to be held accountable and face prison. “They created the biggest national security vulnerability this nation’s ever seen,” he said.

A key factor in fueling the illegal immigration crisis, Homan said, has been the Mexico-based drug cartels. He demanded that the cartels be declared “terrorist organizations” and “wiped off the face of the planet.” Homan noted that while Mexico’s government has consistently failed, for decades, to tackle the cartels, Trump may compel Mexico to act and cooperate in crippling the cartels. “President Trump has a lot of power over Mexico. Look, the tariffs alone. Mexico needs us a lot more than we need them,” he said. Homan continued, “President Trump is willing to do whatever it takes to protect our sovereignty and to protect this country, and he’s ready to do it.”

“Can you summarize in one sentence what you plan to do with the job?” Carlson asked. Homan replied that Trump gave his “border czar” three responsibilities. “Number one is secure the border, shut the border down. Number two, run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen. And, third, he wants me to lead an effort to find the over 300,000 missing children that were trafficked into this country,” Homan detailed. “We can secure the border,” he stated. “We did it before. This time we’re gonna finish the job.”

The “Remain in Mexico” policy, which mandated that illegal immigrants apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents be detained in Mexico instead of being released into America, will be reinstated, Homan said. “That was a game-changer,” he explained. “Because after two months, they stopped coming. They stopped coming because they knew they weren’t being released into the United States to not show up in court. … When they stopped coming, look at the lives that were saved, look at the money that was saved.”

According to Homan, over seven million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. have been ordered removed but haven’t been removed. An additional nearly one million have criminal convictions, which means that they will be a “priority” for removal. Nearly two million illegal immigrants are considered security threats or fugitives and will also be deported. “And then we remove the rest of them,” Homan said. He noted that funding will be a crucial issue and expressed his hope that Congress will support Trump’s deportation program and ensure that Homan, ICE, Border Patrol, and other relevant agencies have the funding and resources needed to enact a mass deportation program. He explained, “We’re only going to be as successful as the funding we’re given to get this job done.”

Homan also warned that opposition or resistance to federal immigration law will not be tolerated. Democratic governors or mayors who attempt to halt deportations in “sanctuary cities” will be prosecuted. “You can choose not to help us. Stand aside, because we’re going to do it,” Homan said. He continued, “However, there’s a line you can’t cross. If you’re going to impede what we’re doing, that’s a felony. If you’re going to knowingly harbor and conceal illegal aliens from ICE agents … that’s a felony. And we’re going to prosecute. We’re done playing the game.”

In a personal moment, Homan addressed why he took the “border czar” job Trump offered. “Because I love my country,” he stated simply. “This is the second time I came back from retirement to serve this president,” Homan shared. He continued, “The first day I woke up with a smile on my face was the day after the election, because I knew we [could] fix this. By fixing it, you save lives. Secure borders save lives.”

The incoming “border czar” also mentioned the more than 300,000 migrant children who have gone missing on the Biden-Harris administration’s watch, with most thought to have been sex-trafficked across the border. “We gotta save these women and children,” Homan said. “We gotta save these kids, a lot of them are living a life of hell every day. … We’re gonna find some of them living with pedophiles, living in sex-slavery, some are gonna be dead, but we gotta find these children,” he insisted. Homan shared from his own personal experiences in his decades-long career in law enforcement:

“I’ve talked to little girls as young as nine who were raped multiple times by members of the cartel. Not once, numerous times. Grown men crawled upon this little girl and took everything innocent and pure from her. Her life would never be the same. You look in her eyes, there wasn’t life in her eyes. … [T]his little girl’s devastated for life. And this happens every day.”

Homan concluded, “When you lose the border, trafficking and sex trafficking’s gonna skyrocket, child deaths will skyrocket, migrant deaths will skyrocket, American deaths will skyrocket.” He recounted that Trump called him and said, “‘You’ve been complaining about it for four years, you wanna come fix it?’ How do you say no?” Homan shared, “I love this country. I want to save some lives. Secure borders save lives. So I’m gonna come back, do what I can.”

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.



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