By Virginia Allen, The Daily Signal | November 12, 2024
Illegal aliens who pose “national security threats” to the U.S. will be prioritized for deportation, Tom Homan told Fox News on Monday.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Sunday that Homan would serve as “border czar” in his forthcoming administration. Homan has been highly critical of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the southern border, repeatedly raising the alarm over the estimated more than 10 million illegal aliens, including 662,000 criminal illegal aliens, who have entered the country on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ watch.
Trump has pledged to launch a mass illegal alien deportation program under his administration, and, as “border czar,” Homan will play a central role in executing that campaign promise.
Trump’s new “border czar” says he became increasingly passionate about securing America’s borders after seeing the ways the Mexican criminal cartels exploit migrants, especially minors, for their own gain.
“Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime,” Homan told The Daily Signal during a phone call in October. “Children are dying almost daily on the border.”
In May 2003, Homan was working for the newly formed Immigration and Customs Enforcement when he got a call about an incident in Victoria, Texas. A group of illegal immigrants had been found packed inside a sweltering truck trailer. Among the 19 dead was a little boy, only 5 years old.
At the crime scene, Homan directed the men bagging the bodies to save the child until last, because “I couldn’t deal with it at the time, because I just kept seeing my son there,” he recounted.
Homan later learned from survivors who were inside the trailer that the “boy begged for his life and begged his father not let him die,” Homan recalled, noting that the father was powerless to save his child.
“After talking to the witnesses and hearing the story, I just said, ‘No, this doesn’t have to happen. If we had a secure border, it wouldn’t have to happen,’” he explained.
Children have long been some of the greatest victims of America’s border crisis, and today, the situation has only grown more dire with the implementation of policies that allow illegal immigration and provide criminal cartels with opportunities for exploitation, according to Homan.
Homan’s border security career began in the 1980s when he joined the Border Patrol after serving as a police officer in New York. He was first assigned to the San Diego sector’s Campo Border Patrol Station, which at the time had only about 30 agents.
Mike Syzdek joined Border Patrol a few years before Homan and helped to train the new agent at the Campo station.
Homan “had a really outgoing personality and everybody liked him,” Syzdek told The Daily Signal in a phone call Tuesday.
“He was a really good worker, but he liked to do practical jokes and different things, and the guys just loved him,” recalled Syzdek, who retired from Border Patrol in 2007.
“Most trainees take a while to get acclimated to the area and the mission of the [Border Patrol],” Syzdek said, adding, “We all noted that Tom [Homan] was a very fast learner.”
Syzdek and Homan worked together with other members of their team in 1986 to carry out a seizure of 1,285 pounds cocaine, which, at the time, “was the largest land seizure [of cocaine] in the history of the United States,” Syzdek said.
After Homan left the Campo station, Syzdek did not keep in touch but him, but says he was pleased when he learned years later that Homan was working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Homan served as executive associate director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations office beginning in 2013 under the Obama administration. In 2017, Trump appointed Homan acting director of ICE, a role Homan served in until his retirement a year and a half later. Homan will turn 63 later this month.
As Trump’s border czar, Homan is “going to do whatever is necessary,” Syzdek said. With his “knowledge and experience,” Homan “not only is he going to be the executor of the policies that President Trump is going to come up with, but he’s going to have a big hand in recommending these policies, and the president could have no better adviser, in my opinion, than Tom,” according to Syzdek.
“I’m so happy to see that he has obtained this position, such an important position in our government,” Syzdek said. “A boy from Campo, you know. Go figure.”
Virginia Allen is a senior news producer for The Daily Signal and host of "The Daily Signal Podcast" and "Problematic Women."
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