Tom Homan, a Fox News contributor and former Trump Administration Head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP
On May 7, 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions officially announced the Trump administration’s infamous “zero tolerance” policy. “If you are smuggling a child,” Sessions said, “then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” The idea was to deter would-be migrants from coming to the United States by ripping families apart. At least 1,780 children had already been separated by that point, according to government records. But it was not until that day six years ago that the hallmark draconian measure of the Trump era was given a public rollout.
Standing next to Sessions that day was Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The intellectual “father” of the idea of separating families to deter migration, Homan was among the Homeland Security officials who first floated the extreme measure as a way to tackle the 2014 migrant family crisis during the Obama administration. (Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson rejected the proposal.) “Most parents don’t want to be separated,” Homan told the Atlantic‘s Caitlin Dickerson. “I’d be lying to you if I didn’t think that would have an effect.”
Today, on the anniversary of the “zero tolerance” policy, Homan was again on public display—a speaker at a Heritage Foundation event called “Securing the Border and Keeping Americans Safe: How Illegal Immigration Leads to Preventable Crime.” It was meant to draw on a false trope linking immigrants to criminal activity and violence. (Evidence shows that immigrants are less likely than US citizens to commit crimes.)
Homan, a career law enforcement officer, now leads a homeland security consulting firm and is a fixture on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets. In his office, he keeps a framed Washington Post article that said he was “really good” at deporting people. Homan is also helping lay the groundwork for a potential second Trump presidency’s mass deportation plans. “We’re going to do it the way we’ve always done it—professionally and well-planned—and we take the worst first,” he said on The Joe Piscopo Show earlier this week. Homan then added a caveat: “No one is off the table.”
At Heritage, Homan condemned sanctuary cities as “sanctuaries for criminals” and referenced the murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan migrant who entered the United States unlawfully. The case quickly became a political flashpoint on the right and even prompted President Joe Biden to make “an illegal” remark during the State of the Union address, which he later regretted. “Do we want to talk about family separation?” Homan said, referencing Riley’s he added: “They buried their children. That’s the separation.”
The 5,000 families forcibly separated under Trump and who are still living through the consequences of the zero tolerance policy might disagree with Homan’s assessment. In some cases, parents are still waiting for reunification after having been away from their children for years. As a result of a settlement agreement reached last year, some families are entitled to apply for temporary lawful status and work authorization in the United States. They may also have another shot at applying for asylum, but without access to legal counsel, the odds are stacked against them. As one advocate told me: “the actual physical reunification—it’s just one of a long process of healing and rebuilding.”
Decrying the Biden administration’s border policies as the “biggest national security failure I’ve seen in this country in my lifetime,” Homan also parroted claims not supported by facts that most immigrants arrested by ICE under the previous administration had criminal records and that the Trump years saw the most secure border in history. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, he said, “should have been impeached two and a half years ago.”
