President Donald Trump announced Friday that former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Tom Homan will be rejoining the administration to be the “border czar.”
Homan served as the acting ICE director from January 2017 to June 2018, when he retired from the position. However, Homan remained active on the president’s behalf with frequent media appearances about the immigration crisis and joined Fox News as a contributor in August 2018. (RELATED: Former ICE Chief On Trump’s Tariff Threat: ‘I Agree With The President 100%’)
The president made the announcement about Homan during an interview on Fox News “Fox & Friends” when he was asked if he would nominate Kevin McAleenan to be the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“He’s doing a very nice job, we’re going to see,” Trump said. “He’s working very hard and we have some great people, as you know, we have some fantastic people that just went in — Mark Morgan and we’re going to have, I will tell you, Tom Homan.”
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The Fox anchors reacted with a bit of surprise at the news, as they had not yet been informed that their network contributor was leaving.
“Tom Homan’s coming back,” Trump said. “I would say that would be announced next week except I’d rather announce it now.”
“He’s going to be very much involved with the border, that’s what he very much wants to be involved with,” he continued. “He’ll be a border czar … he’ll be reporting directly to me, he’ll be probably working out of the White House but spending a lot of time at the border.”
Previous reports indicated former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli were being considered for the newly-created immigration czar position. However, Kobach came under fire when a list of his demands for the role was leaked to the press, and Cuccinelli was later appointed to lead U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within DHS.