“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the first administration in the history of this nation who unsecured a border on purpose,” Homan said. “This isn’t an accident, this isn’t incompetence, this is by design, folks … They obviously perceive a future political advantage, thinking maybe they are future Democratic voters.” Homan called this the “great white replacement theory”: “These millions of people that are released into sanctuary cities across this country who will be counted in the next census, which means what? More seats in the House for the Dems. They’ll own the House forever. This is what they want. They sold this country out for future political power. And to me, that’s treasonous. There’s no other excuse for it.”
Homan then outlined his dystopian vision for unauthorized immigrants under a second Trump administration, dismissing criticisms that his plan was racist, and promising to enact the “biggest deportation operation in the history of the United States.”
In an interview last month with 60 Minutes, Homan fleshed out those plans, announcing that the practice of mass arrests of unauthorized immigrants at workplaces would be revived. When asked about parents being separated from their children who were US citizens, Homan said “families can be deported together.”
Homan and the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Homan began his career in West Carthage, New York as a police officer before joining what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service as a border patrol agent in 1984. He worked as an agent, investigator, and supervisor, before being appointed in 2013 by then-president Barack Obama to be the executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations—a role for which he won the Presidential Rank Award in 2015.
During this time, Homan first floated the idea of separating children from their families as a way of deterring immigrants from crossing the border illegally.
In 2017, he was appointed acting director of ICE less than two weeks into Trump’s first term. He then formalized the child separation policy alongside Stephen Miller, who was just named Trump’s deputy chief of staff.
In 2022, Homan joined Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow where he would go on to contribute a section that outlined the mass arrests and deportations of immigrants to Project 2025, the policy playbook that outlines what a second Trump term would look like. Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 before the election, and repeatedly promised he would not employ anyone in his administration who was linked to it.