US president-elect, Donald Trump, made an executive appointment Monday as he named Tom Homan his 'Border Czar' in what now rang as one effect of his campaign promise to deport illegal migrants and seal the borders.
"Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin," Trump wrote Sunday night on Truth Social.
Homan, 62, an advocate of "zero tolerance" for illegal migration served as the Acting Director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency for a year-and-a-half during Trump's earlier stint and left before being confirmed to the post by the Senate.
Trump wrote, "Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation's Borders ('The Border Czar'), including, but not limited to, the southern border, the northern border, all maritime, and aviation security".
"I've known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our borders," he wrote.
Homan is the second appointment Trump has made, following his naming of Susan Wiles as Chief of Staff, and there are thousands to be filled.
Trump repeatedly said throughout his campaign that he would conduct mass deportations of illegal migrants starting with "Day 1" of his administration.
He said that many of the illegal migrants admitted without vetting are criminals and gang members and at his campaign rallies highlighted crimes like murder and rape they have been accused of.
Mass deportation of illegal migrants would be a daunting task with an estimated 11 million – or more – of them, and Holman laid out his priorities.
Speaking to the Fox News on Monday, Homan said that he was going to focus first on deporting those illegal migrants who are "public security and national security threats", and those who already have orders made by judges to leave the country.
He also said that another priority of his would be finding the 300,000 children who entered without adults by their side, which the Joe Biden administration lost track of.
Most of these, according to him, ended up as victims of forced labor and child sex trafficking.
It was a flow that inflowed during the tenure of Biden and his vice president Kamala Harris who became one of the major electoral issues and a factor in her defeat.
During most of the first three years of their administration, the border was nearly open, and they only tightened border restrictions beginning last May when opposition to illegal migration increased.
In his earlier statement, Biden said that Harris would work on stemming the waves of illegal migration to the US by working with the countries in Latin America that send the most migrants.
That gets her branded as the 'Border Czar' and she was personally held accountable for the migrant crisis.
About 11 million illegal migrants remain in the US, according to the estimation of 2022. Indians are about 725,000, which means they are the third largest group of illegal migrants, according to the Pew Research Centre.
According to official data, in a fiscal year alone which ranges from September 2022 to October 2023, around 97,000 Indians were caught by ICE while crossing into the US illegally and nearly all of those people were released.
Many of them came on "Donkey Flights" which take them to countries in Latin America with lax visa regulations and then make the arduous journey to the US with the help of "coyotes" – people smugglers – via the border with Mexico.
But nearly a third of them entered the US from Canada, according to government date.
US sent back only 1,100 Indians who were in the country illegally in 2023-24.
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