After making immigration a central issue in this year’s presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump has announced that Tom Homan will join his administration as the next “border czar.”

Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social late Sunday that Homan would be in charge of the nation’s borders, “including but not limited to the southern border, the northern border, all maritime and aviation security.”

“I have known Tom for a long time and there is no one better at policing and policing our borders,” Trump wrote.

Homan returns to a top border security role in the Trump White House after serving as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first 18 months of Trump’s first term. Prior to his tenure in the Trump administration, he served in the Obama administration as ICE’s executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations. In 2015, Obama presented Homan with the Presidential Excellence Award.

RELATED STORY | Haley, Pompeo won’t be part of new administration, Trump says

Homan joins a Trump administration that has vowed to carry out mass deportations, which Trump has said will number in the millions.

When Trump was in office, ICE was criticized by Democrats for a policy that separated migrant parents from their children. It was a policy defended by Homan. Homan told PBS in 2018 that keeping families together during arrests was a logistical problem.

“A child cannot go into the custody of the US Marshals with parents charged with the crime of illegal entry,” he told PBS.

RELATED STORY | FEMA worker fired after advising workers to avoid helping disaster survivors who supported Trump

Under Trump’s presidency, Homan said some American citizens could be among those deported. He hinted in an interview with CBS News that children born in the US to migrants in the country illegally could be subject to deportation.

“Their father entered the country absolutely illegally, he had a child knowing he was in the country illegally. So he created that crisis,” he said.

Homan has also widely criticized cities and states for being so-called “sanctuaries” for migrants in the US illegally. In 2018, he suggested that California is losing funding after the state approved a bill that prevented law enforcement from asking about a person’s legal status and arresting people whose only alleged crime was immigration-related.

Homan said in a Fox News interview that the policy puts “politics over public safety.”

While 2017 saw a decrease in the number of apprehensions at the US southwest border, apprehensions increased in 2018 and reached a record high in 2019.

After COVID-19 caused major disruption at border crossings in 2020, apprehensions rose to unprecedented levels in 2021-2023 before easing in 2024, according to ICE data.