Border czar Tom Homan will visit Minneapolis this week following the fatal shooting of an ICU nurse, as videos and eyewitness accounts challenge the Trump administration’s account of the incident and calls mount for investigation into immigration enforcement tactics.
Homan’s visit reflects escalating scrutiny of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis, where multiple fatal incidents have triggered calls for investigation and drawn criticism from both parties.
Who Tom Homan Is
Tom Homan, 64, has spent four decades in immigration enforcement. He began his career in 1984 as a Border Patrol agent before moving to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2003, when the agency was created under the Department of Homeland Security.
During the Obama administration, Homan headed ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arm, responsible for tracking and removing people subject to deportation orders. Despite his association with family-separation policies, he received a Presidential Rank Award from the Obama administration in 2015 for his effectiveness in the role.
His Approach to Immigration Enforcement
Homan describes his approach to immigration enforcement in explicitly legalistic terms, viewing illegal immigration as a black-and-white matter with no exemptions.
“If you’re in the country illegally, you should be concerned,” Homan said in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Just like if I go speeding down the highway, are you worried about getting a ticket? If you lie on your taxes, are you worried about an audit?”
When asked why he had removed people who had lived in the United States for years and had U.S. citizen children, Homan cited legal procedure. “Because he had his due process,” he told the AP.
As Trump’s border czar, Homan has promised aggressive enforcement. In 2024, he vowed to conduct “the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”
He has also stated that enforcement would proceed in a “humane manner” and would initially focus on people he characterizes as public safety and national security threats.
“You concentrate on the public safety threats and the national security threats first, because they’re the worst of the worst,” Homan said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” in 2024. He dismissed suggestions of mass neighborhood raids and detention camps, calling such characterizations “ridiculous.”
What the Record Shows
Immigration enforcement operations under both Trump administrations do not consistently align with Homan’s stated focus on public safety and national security threats.
The Associated Press has documented cases in Minnesota where ICE agents have detained people with legal immigration status, individuals with no criminal records, children, and U.S. citizens.
Under the Obama administration, the United States carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the highest annual total on record. Deportations during the first Trump administration never topped 350,000.
The Bribery Investigation
Homan survived a bribery investigation after accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents posing as businesspeople in a 2024 encounter. The agents had suggested Homan could help them obtain government contracts in a potential second Trump administration.
The Trump Justice Department ultimately closed the investigation. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized the FBI operation as an effort by the Biden administration to “entrap one of the president’s top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position.”