Tom Homan, Trump’s pick to calm Minneapolis after death of Alex Pretti

“Tough but fair.” That’s how Donald Trump describes his border czar, Tom Homan, whom he has sent to Minneapolis to take charge of immigration enforcement operations in the Democratic city, amid a wave of anger after Border Patrol agents fatally shot 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti during a protest in the city on Saturday. Not everyone will agree with the U.S. president’s benevolent description of his official, one of the staunchest defenders of the Republican administration’s most controversial immigration policies. But his posting has been met with widespread relief, following the aggression, showmanship, and slander of the previous head of the operation, Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, under whose command federal agents shot and killed two activists at point-blank range.

Homan, 64, met Tuesday in Minneapolis with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, the mayor of the city that has become a symbol of resistance against immigration policy and of hardline stances against Democratic governments. Speaking before traveling to Iowa Tuesday to deliver a speech on the economy, Trump asserted that “everything is going very well” following the arrival of his representative.

The mission of the high-ranking official, one of the most public faces of U.S. immigration policy — he is frequently seen at White House press briefings — will be to focus Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations on investigating a massive fraud scandal, and move away from the massive, violent raids that characterized Bovino’s tenure. His profile is much more political than that of his predecessor and Homan exhibited a more lenient approach to apprehending suspects at the border.

His appointment is a conciliatory gesture from the White House to try to calm tensions amid widespread outrage following the deaths of Pretti and, three weeks ago, poet Renee Good, which have triggered a collapse in the Trump administration’s approval ratings. The border czar has decades of experience in law enforcement, having begun his career as a police officer in New York in 1983 and then as a Border Patrol agent in California in 1984. He also oversaw deportation operations during the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama (2009-2017).

But while his appointment may be seen as an olive branch offered by the White House, Homan is no dove when it comes to immigration policy. During Trump’s first term, he served as acting director of ICE. In that role, he became the public face and one of the most vocal advocates for the Republican’s initiatives against illegal immigration. These included the separation of children from families who crossed the border illegally, a proposal Homan had already put forward during the Obama era as a deterrent, and which was ultimately rejected.

In 2017, eight months after Trump took office, Homan publicly declared that ICE would arrest undocumented immigrants who came to take custody of detained children, something previous administrations had avoided doing. He has also repeatedly opposed “sanctuary city” policies, which restrict cooperation between local authorities and police forces with federal immigration agencies.

Indeed, one of the strategies Trump has indicated he intends to pursue following the events in Minneapolis is to push through legislation in the U.S. Congress prohibiting cities from declaring themselves immigration sanctuaries. One of the president’s key allies on Capitol Hill, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, has already stated on his social media accounts that he plans to introduce a bill to this effect.

During Joe Biden’s presidency, Homan moved to the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, where he contributed to Project 2025, a set of right-wing proposals designed to transform the federal government and consolidate executive power should Trump return to office. Although the Republican claimed during his campaign that he had no connection to the document, its tenets have served as a roadmap for his administration throughout its first year in office.

Project 2025 proposes, among other things, mass raids on undocumented immigrants at their workplaces and the use of active-duty military personnel to assist in their detention. It also suggests eliminating citizen watch groups that allegedly obstruct ICE operations. The document further advocates for the “indefinite reduction” of refugee resettlement programs and the repeal of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for migrants from certain countries experiencing war or natural disasters. The Trump administration has implemented many of these measures.

During his assignment in Minnesota, Homan will report directly to Trump, as the president announced in a social media post on Monday regarding the transfer of his senior official. It was implied that, if he only has to answer to the president, he won’t have to answer to his de facto boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Along with her protégé Bovino, Noem has been among the senior administration officials who, from the outset — and contradicting videos that unanimously debunked this version of events — blamed Pretti for his own death, accusing him of being a “terrorist” who was trying to attack federal agents.

Trump’s statement has highlighted the divisions within the White House regarding how to implement the president’s immigration policy. During the 2024 election campaign, Homan assured the public that deportation operations would be carefully measured. “It’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods. We’re not going to build concentration camps. I’ve read all that. It’s ridiculous,” the current border czar declared at the time.

But events have proven him wrong. Under Noem’s leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, and under pressure to meet very high deportation quotas, ICE and the Border Patrol have opted for indiscriminate raids and showy actions. Noem herself has even posed for the cameras in front of the cells of the notorious Cecot — the maximum-security prison created by President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, where hundreds of Venezuelans were deported — and during ICE raids.

The White House has sought to quell rumors of serious private disagreements between Homan and Noem. Justifying why the border czar reported to Trump instead of Noem, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt pointed out that the Secretary of Homeland Security “is also in charge of FEMA, and we are in the wake of a brutal winter storm where hundreds of thousands of Americans have been impacted by that [...] Border czar Homan is in a unique position to drop everything and go to Minnesota to continue having these productive conversations with state and local officials,” the spokeswoman noted.

The top immigration official has been embroiled in other controversies. In September, The New York Times reported that a 2024 recording showed Homan accepting a bag containing $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents during an investigation into alleged corruption that the Trump administration’s Justice Department eventually closed. The border czar maintains that he never accepted that amount from anyone.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition