Thomas Homan

Thomas Douglas Homan is an American former police officer and government official who served during the Trump Administration as Acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from January 30, 2017 to June 29, 2018. Within the U.S. government, he was among the earliest proponents of separating children from their parents as a means of deterring illegal entry into the country. Since his retirement from government, he has been a Fox News contributor.

Career
Homan was born in West Carthage, New York. He holds an associate degree in criminal justice from Jefferson Community College and a bachelor's degree from SUNY Polytechnic Institute. He was a police officer in West Carthage, New York before joining what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1984. He was a Border Patrol agent, investigator, and supervisor before being appointed by President Barack Obama to Executive Associate Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2013.

By 2014, he had begun to argue that separating children from their parents would be an effective means of discouraging illegal border crossings. The journalist Caitlin Dickerson describes him as the "intellectual father" of the policy, which he outlined years before it was adopted by the Trump administration. “Most parents don’t want to be separated,” he told Dickerson. He argued that this fact made separation an effective tool for immigration enforcement: “I’d be lying to you if I didn’t think that would have an effect.”

In 2015, President Obama gave him a Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive. A Washington Post article at the time stated, "Thomas Homan deports people. And he's really good at it."

Acting director of ICE
On January 30, 2017, President Donald Trump demoted acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Daniel Ragsdale to deputy director, a position he already held, and appointed Homan as acting director.

In May 2017, Homan announced ICE had arrested 41,319 people between Inauguration Day and the end of April, a 38% increase from the same period the year before.

As acting ICE director, Homan said that undocumented immigrants "should be afraid." He has denied saying "aliens commit more crimes than US citizens".

On November 14, 2017, Trump nominated Homan for ICE Director.

In February 2018, Homan said that politicians who support sanctuary city policies should be charged with crimes.

In the April of 2018, he and Kevin McAleenan formally advised Secretary of Homeland Security Kierstjen Nielsen to implement the Trump administration's "Zero Tolerance" policy on immigration, including the prosecution of parents and the separation of children from their families. Homan participated in the May 2018 press conference announcing that the policy was going into effect.

On April 30, 2018, he announced that he would retire from his position as acting ICE Director effective June of the same year.

On June 5, 2018, Homan appeared for a discussion with the Policy Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, where he defended the separation of children from their parents.

Post-government
In July 2019, Homan testified before the House Oversight Committee regarding the Trump administration's family separation policy.

On February 25, 2022, Homan was slated as a keynote speaker for the America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, but left before the conference began after he learned that the founder Nick Fuentes had praised Putin for the Invasion of Ukraine.

Homan joined the Heritage Foundation in February 2022 and became a contributor to its Project 2025, which proposes mass arrests, detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants across the nation. The proposal mirrors Trump's plans for a second term.

At a July 2024 National Conservatism Conference meeting, Homan said if "Trump comes back in January, I'll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen. They ain't seen shit yet. Wait until 2025." During a campaign rally the next day, Trump signaled he would bring Homan back for a second Trump administration. On July 17 at the 2024 Republican National Convention, Homan called Biden's immigration policies "national suicide" and told "millions of illegal aliens" to "start packing".