President-elect Donald Trump is expected to sign a slew of executive order on his first day in office, including multiple that pertain to securing America’s southern border with Mexico.
“I think people are going to be pleased with the executive orders he is going to sign,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told “The Daily Signal Podcast,” adding, “I’m familiar with many of them, but I’m not going to get ahead of the president on that.”
Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump from January 2017 to June 2018, said he expects the president to “go back to what was successful” at the border during his first administration.
“We go back to Remain in Mexico, [safe third country agreements], end catch and release, continue building that wall,” Homan said.
While many Americans who voted for Trump will likely be pleased with the president’s actions to secure the border, Trump’s border and immigration agenda will also be met with resistance, Homan predicts.
“I think we’re going to take a lot of hate,” he said. “We’re going to be sued every day, numerous times. I think you’ll see the Left try to control the media. They’re going to show the first crying female, first crying child, and say how inhumane we are. But they won’t to talk about the 340,000 children that they’ve failed to take care of,” Homan said, presumably referring to the Biden administration.
In August, ICE reported that it does not know the location or status of more than 300,000 migrant children. Between fiscal year 2019 and 2023, 32,000 illegal alien minors did not appear for their immigration court hearing, and an additional 291,000 were never given an immigration court date.
“ICE has no assurance UCs (unaccompanied migrant children) are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” Inspector General Joseph Cuffari’s report said.
The leftist corporate media will “tell one side of the story,” Homan said. “they’ll try to vilify us, but they’re not going to stop us from doing [our] job.”
After what he has witnessed while serving both as a Border Patrol agent and in ICE, Homan says he does not care what the media says about him.
“If they saw what I saw in 34 years, all the tragedies I’ve dealt with in 34 years, they would certainly understand me. They may not still like me, but there’s a reason why we do what we do. I’m tired of women being raped, making that journey. I’m tired of dead children. I’m tired of women and children being sex trafficked.”
Mexico’s criminal cartels, according to Homan, are “making more money than they’ve ever made in smuggling aliens, trafficking in women and children, and moving dope. So, hate all you want, push the misinformation out all you want, we’re not going to slow down. We’re not going to go away. We’re going to get this done.”
Homan joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” for a special bonus edition to discuss the resources the Trump administration will need to carry out deportations of illegal aliens, and what information he expects to be uncovered regarding the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border.
Listen to the podcast below or read the full transcript:
Virginia Allen: Mr. Homan, thanks for taking the time to be here today.
Tom Homan: Thanks for the invite.
Allen: What did the president say to you when he called you and asked you to serve in his administration?
Homan: Well, we’ve talked all through the campaign. So, he knew that if he called on me, I’d take the job. So, he knew what the answer was before he even called me. But he called me on Friday night and we talked about me. I’ve been complaining about the border for four years, so he’s given me an opportunity to come back and fix it. How do you say “no” to that?
Look, I think President [Donald] Trump is a game-changer. We had the most success, most secure border in my lifetime under President Trump. And it went from the most secure border to historically legal immigration.
So, when he called me, I was ready to go. He didn’t even have to ask, but he did. I immediately said “yes,” and then we started describing the position and what my responsibilities were and I said, “Game in, let’s do it. Game on.” And a couple days later he announced it and we’re ready to go.
Allen: One of the first things that you and the president have agreed will be a top priority is deportations and specifically deporting criminal illegal aliens. That costs a lot of money, right? [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is going to need money in order to carry out these deportations. And right now we’ve seen that the Biden administration seems to have made it almost like their mission to spend as much money as possible before leaving office.
What do you expect to find when you get in there on Day One? What kind of resources do you think you’re going to have available in order to carry out these deportations?
Homan: Well, not enough resources to do what I want to do, but we’re going to take whatever resources we have. We’re going to start on Day One and we’re going to start the deportation operation. We’re going to secure the border and we’re going to find, look to find over 300,000 children that were smuggled into the country and released by the sponsors.
So, Day One it starts, we’re going to do as much as you can with what we got. And I think Congress will fund us going forward at an appropriate level to make sure we answer the mandate given by the American people. Secure border immigration enforcement was the No. 1 issue affecting voters. So, they want it fixed. So, we’re going to get it fixed. We’re going to do everything we can with what we have. And you’re right, they’re sabotaging this coming in, but it’s not going to stop us. We’re going to get this done.
Allen: Have you been having conversations with members of Congress about the funding that ICE is going to need? Congress is pretty used to shifting funds toward [Customs and Border Protection] but not as used to increasing those funds that ICE needs. Are members pretty open?
Homan: Yeah, I’ve had numerous conversations with people in the House and the Senate. They understand the need for funding. A lot of people complain it’s going to be an expensive operation and it is. But we’re spending much more than that now in perpetuity between free airline tickets, free hotel rooms, free medical care, what it’s done to our school system, what it’s done to our medical trauma centers and hospitals, and that’s in perpetuity.
So yeah, it’s going to be an expensive operation, but in the long run would be a tax savings for American people. And that’s the conversation I’ve been having with members on the Hill. Yeah, it’s expensive, we need the money. But guess what? In the long run, this will cost savings.
Allen: Yeah, big bill upfront, much cheaper in the long run.
Homan: Right.
Allen: How quickly do you anticipate deportation starting?
Homan: Day One, [Jan.] 21. ICE agents will be out doing their job or going to take the handcuffs off ICE and put them on the bad guys. And we’ve been real clear that right out of the gate we’re concentrating on public safety threats and security threats, but no one’s off the table. If … you’re in the United States illegal, you got a problem. But we realize that we got to do the worst first and that’s what we’re going to do.
Allen: How do you handle states like California that have put together a slush fund of $25 million in order to provide legal services to illegal aliens to help them avoid deportation?
Homan: Well, they’re not going to stop us from doing their job. They’re just going to make it harder. It’s going to be less efficient. It’s going to be more costly to do a job in a sanctuary city. I still find amazing—because, like I just said, we’re going to concentrate on public safety threats and national security threats—how any elected representative, whether you’re a mayor or a city, a governor, wouldn’t want to push back on removing public safety threats from your communities and making the community safer. I thought that was the No. 1 responsibility—protection of the communities.
Look, they can put up any roadblocks they want. We’re going to get this job done. It’ll be harder to do it, but we’re going to do it. So, we’re not afraid of hard work. It’s more important we protect the national security of this nation and take public safety threats off the street. How many more young women have to be raped and murdered and burned alive before this country wakes up the left side of the country, wakes up and realizes that this isn’t a bad thing? This is about enforcing the law and protecting our public safety.
Allen: I think a lot of people don’t realize that this conversation really also is about protecting the lives of those migrants and ensuring that those who have been exploited by the cartels are no longer exploited.
Homan: That’s what people need to understand. Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. Studies have been done where one-third of the women that make that journey through cartels get sexually assaulted. One-third admitted it. So, how many is the actual number, right?
We know aliens die on the border every day. A historic number of aliens have died under the Biden administration. Historic number of Americans have died of fentanyl because of the open border. So, a secure border saves lives. No one can argue [with] that.
When President Trump had 90% less people coming, how many women weren’t being sexually assaulted? How many aliens hadn’t died making that journey? How many Americans didn’t die from drug overdoses because borders locked down? So, secure borders save lives and that’s where we’re going to push.
Allen: Regarding unaccompanied children and sex trafficking and the exploitation of those kids, what do you expect to find when you get into that position as border czar? Is there a lot more information that you think is going to be discovered about what exactly has happened to these young people?
Homan: We need to have access to everything [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] has done. We’re going to need the records of what sponsors these children were released to. Many whistleblowers from ORR have already said that sponsors weren’t all fingerprinted. The identifications weren’t always verified. So, it’s going to be a hard job.
Out of all the three things that I’m leading—the border, the immigration/deportation, and the children—the children can be most difficult because you and I, and most adults, all adults, have a footprint, digital footprint. We own a home, own a car, we pay bills, we pay utilities, we have credits, so we all can be found. Children don’t have that kind of footprint, which means we got to use a footprint, digital footprint, of the sponsors, but the records are poor or not existing. It’s going to make them harder.
But what we’re going to find is many of these children, when we find them, are going to be in forced labor. Some will be in forced sex trafficking, sex slavery, not all of them, some of them will be safe. But we got to find these children, make sure they are safe and rescued because many of them are living a life of hell and we got to rescue these children. We’ll deal with the immigration consequences after the fact. But right now we got to save these children, find them and save them.
Allen: Well, like you said, we’re literally talking about hundreds of thousands of kids here that we don’t know where they are. So if they don’t have that footprint, what does Step One look like in actually finding these kids?
Homan: Well, there’s ways I’m not going to discuss on air because it’s law enforcement-sensitive. We have our ways, our methods to do that.
But one of the things we’re going to do is count on American people. Parents across the country have an innate ability to recognize when something’s not right with a child. So, we’re going to ask people to see something, say something, give us some leads. You may know where some of these children are at. You may have friends that know that some of these children were placed and looking for the public’s help. We deputize every American citizen to help us rescue these children. So, there’ll be more coming on that. But we’re going to reach out to the communities and we’ll reach out to the private sector—we’ve done a lot of this work already—and make a partnership with the private sector.
Allen: There’s a lot that we don’t know about what happened under the Biden administration when it comes to conversations that were had about the border behind closed doors, money that was funneled into nongovernmental organizations that really allowed for this crisis to take place. Are those things going to come out?
Homan: That’s all also going to be investigated. What role did U.N. play of immigration? What role did they play? What role did the NGOs play? Were they involved in coordinating? Were they complicit in international building immigration? How did the NGOs get funded? Who funded them? How was that money spent?
So, all of this will be looked at with a new administration to make sure that American people have the truth and see what happened to their tax dollars and why this happened. Why did they choose to unsecure the border on purpose? What was the reason behind that? So, all that’s going to be looked at.
Allen: There’s going to be a number of executive orders that are signed on Day One, including those having to deal with the border and immigration. What executive orders would you like to see the president sign on Day One?
Homan: Well, look, I think people are going to be pleased with the executive orders he is going to sign. I’m familiar with many of them, but I’m not going to get ahead of the president on that. But I think we go back to what was successful, right?
During the Trump administration, we have the most secure border in my lifetime. So, we go back to “Remain in Mexico,” third safe country agreements, end catch and release, continue building that wall, things that we prove work.
We had the most secure border in our lifetime because of President Trump and what he’s done with out-of-the-box thinking. And they were game-changers. Remain in Mexico was a game-changer. After about 60 days, people stopped giving the criminal cartels everything they’ve ever had in their life, everything they’ve owned to be smuggled into the United States. And after they saw they weren’t being released into the United States during Remain in Mexico, they stopped coming. And when they stopped coming, they stopped spending their life savings, giving it to the criminal cartel. They stopped dying entering the country. They stopped being sexually assaulted into this country.
Cartels sell them a bag of goods: “We’ll get to the United States, you can claim asylum,” but they never tell them that 90% of those asylum claims end up with an order of removal.
So, I suspect what you’re going to see is President Trump dusting off a lot of what we did in the first administration because they were proven effective and put them back in place.
Allen: And even those that under the Biden administration have received those removal orders, correct me if I’m wrong, but we know a lot of those folks, they’re still here.
Homan: We got 1.4 million right now, illegal aliens who had due process at great taxpayer expense and were ordered removed and did not leave. They became a fugitive. And I say this, the people that are saying this is a terrible, terrible operation, it’s inhumane, whatever—I hear it all. You can’t demand the right to claim asylum and see a judge. You can’t demand the right to due process. And at the end of that due process, a judge makes the decision. You got to uphold those decisions. If we don’t, then what the hell are we doing?
If the due process doesn’t mean anything, if the final decision of the court isn’t handed down and executed, then what are we doing? You might as well just shut down immigration courts because the judges’ orders don’t mean anything. Take the Border Patrol off the border because there’s no consequences.
So no, you can’t demand or create a historic illegal immigration crisis and not follow through with the decisions. You want to see a judge. We’ll make that happen. You want to claim asylum. We will make that happen. But at the end of that game, when … the judge orders them removed, we have to remove them. That’s what the law requires.
Allen: What do you expect to see a year from now? What’s the situation going to look like?
Homan: I think we will take a lot of hate. We’re going to be sued every day, numerous times. I think you’ll see the Left try to control the media. They’re going to show the first crying female, first crying child, and say how inhumane we are.
But they won’t talk about 340,000 children that they’ve failed to take care of. They’re not going to talk about the young women who have been murdered in this country at the hands of criminal cartels. They’re not going to talk about the hundreds of angel moms and dads who buried their children. You want to talk about family separation? They buried their children because their children were killed by a member of a criminal cartel or someone that’s not supposed to be here.
They’ll tell one side of the story. They’ll try to vilify, but they’re not going to stop us doing our job. I don’t care what the media says about me. If they saw what I saw in 34 years, saw the tragedies I’ve dealt with in 34 years, they would certainly understand me. They may not still like me, but there’s a reason why we do what we do.
I’m tired of women being raped making that journey. I’m tired of dead children. I’m tired of women and children being sex trafficked. On this administration, sex trafficking is up 600% on women and children.
We have a record number of people on the terrorist watchlist being arrested. Historic record, 3,500% increase. Record number of Americans dying of fentanyl. We got a record number of cartel members that have entered this country. The criminal cartels in Mexico are making more money than they’ve ever made in smuggling aliens, trafficking of women and children, and moving dope. So, hate all you want. Push the misinformation out all you want. We’re not going to slow down. We’re not going to go away. We’re going to get this done.
Allen: Over 30 years of service for you of working to secure the border, of working to protect the border. Many people wouldn’t fault you for saying, “I’ve seen it all. I’ve been in the dirt and the muck of it, I want to kick my feet up, I want to take a break from it all.” Why are you coming back?
Homan: Becasue we got a problem. The border is the biggest national security vulnerability this nation has seen. Because we got over 2 million “gotaways.” Who are they?
We know over 2 million people entered this country illegal, they weren’t arrested, weren’t vetted. We don’t know who they are, where they came from. We also know that there’s a record number of people on the terrorist watchlist that have been arrested under this administration. They arrested more people on the terrorist watchlist last month than we did under four years of President Trump. Four years under President Trump had 14. They had more than that in a month. There’s a 3,500% increase on people on the terrorist watchlist.
[FBI Director] Christopher Wray—who I’m not pals with and don’t respect a lot of what he’s said and done—even he agrees the southwest border has become a national security vulnerability. The intelligence community has made it clear that there are threats inside the United States that came across that border. There are terrorist cells within this country.
So, you can’t have strong national security if you don’t have border security. We need to know what’s coming in, who’s coming in, where it’s coming in.
I love this country. Like you said, I started with 34 years. The border is broken. We fixed it once before. We’re going to come back and fix it again. This time we’re going to finish the job. Then I can finally retire knowing that I served my country and we got this country a safer place. And by doing so, secure border saves lives. Again, when you have a secure border and 90% less people are coming, less people are being raped, less people are dying.
So that’s why I’m coming back and it’s the second time I come out of retirement for President Trump. I plan on this being my last. So, we’re going to get this job done so that I can retire and know that I served my country honorably. And again, a lot of people out there despise me and the work I do, but I don’t care. I’m going to come back and it’s the right thing to do. Saving lives is the right thing to do.
Allen: Have you spoken with President Trump specifically about the wall and his plans for adding to the wall?
Homan: We want to add to the wall. The wall works. Every place to build a border barrier, migrations went down, illegal drug flow went down. But what people don’t talk about is the wall also saves lives. And what I mean by that, the most vulnerable, those that come across the border are the women and children. Women and children can’t get over that wall, pretty much, which means they’re going to go to a place where there’s not a wall, and what’s waiting on them? The men and women of the Border Patrol who deal with this humanitarian crisis, who will take care of their health crisis, which many are in bad shape when they get here. So, it saves lives. So, we’re going to finish the wall.
Allen: A lot of American families over the past several years have lost loved ones to fentanyl, at the hands of illegal aliens, whether in vehicle crashes or at the physical hands in the case of individuals like Laken Riley, Rachel Morin. What is your message to those families that have experienced firsthand the tragedy of this open border crisis?
Homan: Well, look, your heart breaks for them because their children should still be alive. If President Trump was president the last four years, the man that killed Laken Riley would’ve been detained and arrested in New York.
He was arrested in New York City for endangerment to a child. If it wasn’t this administration, and if it wasn’t the priorities of ICE that you can’t arrest an illegal alien unless you’re convicted of a serious crime, he would’ve been taken into custody. He would’ve never got to Georgia to commit that crime. So, help is coming.
We got President Trump coming who’s, again, unprecedented in his success to secure the border. So, help is coming. Too late for them, but they can rest assured that once we secure that border, less bad guys will get in and less of this stuff will happen. So, more families can be spared of the terrible, terrible tragedy they’re dealing with and they’ll deal with the rest of their lives.
I’ve met hundreds of angel moms and dads and I remember every single story and I’ll never forget those stories. And we’re doing this for them in a major way because the Left keeps talking about the Trump family separation. But no one talks about the thousands of separations that have occurred. You want to talk about separation, they bury their children. That’s a permanent separation. So, help is coming and hopefully we can save more families from dealing with tragedies like they dealt with.
Allen: Mr. Homan, thank you for your time.
Homan: Right. Thank you.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
