US president-elect Donald Trump said late on Sunday he was bringing back hardline immigration official Tom Homan to oversee the country's borders in the incoming administration.
Trump has pledged to launch — on day one of his presidency — the largest deportation operation of undocumented immigrants in US history.
"I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation's Borders ("The Border Czar")," Trump posted on his social network Truth Social.
"I've known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders."
Homan will be in charge of "all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin", Trump added.
During Trump's election campaign, he repeatedly railed against undocumented immigrants, .
Super-charging concerns
While the US government has struggled for years to manage its southern border with Mexico, Trump has super-charged concerns by claiming an "invasion" is underway by migrants he says will rape and murder Americans.
In rally speeches, he wildly exaggerated local tensions and misled his audiences about immigration statistics and policy.
Violent crime, which spiked under Trump, has fallen in every year of President Joe Biden's administration.
Trump struggled to ramp up deportations during his 2017-2021 presidency. When counting both immigration removals and faster "returns" to Mexico by US border officials, Biden deported more immigrants in 2023 than any Trump year, according to US government data.
Homan, who served in the Trump administration for a year and a half during his first term as director of immigration enforcement, said in a late October interview that the scale of the deportations would hinge on potential officers and detention space.
"It all depends on what the budget is," he said.
'Operation Aurora'
Trump vowed to tackle migrant gangs using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — which allows the federal government to round up and deport foreigners belonging to enemy countries — as part of a mass deportation drive he christened "Operation Aurora".
Aurora was the scene of a viral video showing armed Latinos rampaging through an apartment block that spurred sweeping, false narratives about the town being terrorised by Latin American migrants.
Trump has similarly promoted the .
