Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, warned of the American public turning on the administration’s hardline deportation policies if they were not focused on criminals.
In a June 2025 interview with NBC News to promote his book, Homan said the administration would need to prioritize targeting migrants who had committed crimes beyond being in the U.S. illegally in order to “keep the faith of the American people.”
The comments from last year have resurfaced as polling shows Trump is facing growing backlash over his heavy-handed immigration policies, particularly in the wake of the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Data from the Department of Homeland Security also suggests ICE is not arresting the “worst of the worst” in its raids, instead detaining people accused of nonviolent offenses or with no convictions at all.
“I think the vast majority of the American people think criminal illegal aliens need to leave. And if we stick to that prioritization, I think we keep the faith of the American people,” Homan told NBC News on June 16. “And I think the more we do that, the more the American people will support what President Trump’s doing. We got to do it and we’ve got to do it in a humane manner.”
Homan was deployed last month to lead on-the-ground immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, effectively replacing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem and top Border Patrol goon Gregory Bovino following their disastrous handling of operations in the city.
Homan’s remarks last June came as Bovino was overseeing large-scale immigration raids in Los Angeles, including operations targeting nonviolent migrants at their places of work. The backlash to those sweeps prompted Trump to deploy the National Guard and Marines to control protests in the Democratic city.
Homan warned at the time that Bovino’s aggressive tactics risked sweeping up migrants who had legally entered the U.S. to seek asylum instead of hardened criminals.
“I think the more stories like that, people are going to question what we’re doing more,” Homan said.
The White House border czar official, who served as a Homeland Security official under both the Obama and Trump administrations, argued that prioritizing criminal migrants would not signal that authorities were turning a blind eye to others in the country illegally.
“When I say prioritize public safety threats, they’re just a priority. I’ve said it many times: If you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table. If we find you while we’re out there looking, you’re going to be arrested,” Homan told NBC News.
In a statement to NBC News, DHS insisted it is focusing on hardened criminals in its immigration raids, and there are no differences of opinion within the administration when it comes to immigration enforcement.
“As Border Czar Homan and Secretary Noem have both said numerous times, ICE conducts targeted operations to remove public safety threats from this country—any individual illegally in the country is on the table,” a DHS spokesperson said. “There is only one page: the President’s page. Everyone’s on the same page.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for further comment.
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