The Daily Signal - Border Czar Tom Homan: ‘People Are Going to Be Pleased’ With Trump’s Executive Orders

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to sign a slew of executive order on his first day in office, including multiple that pertain to securing America’s southern border with Mexico.    “I think people are going to be pleased with the executive orders he is going to sign,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told "The Daily Signal Podcast," adding, “I'm familiar with many of them, but I'm not going to get ahead of the president on that.”   Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump from January 2017 to June 2018, said had he expects the president to “go back to what was successful” at the border during his first administration.   “We go back to Remain in Mexico, third safe country agreements, end catch and release, continue building that wall,” Homan said.    While many the Americans who voted for Trump will likely be pleased with the president’s actions to secure the border, Trump’s border and immigration agenda will also be met with resistance, Homan predicts.    “I think we're going to take a lot of hate,” he said. “We're going to be sued every day, numerous times. I think you'll see the left try to control the media. They're going to show the first crying female, first crying child, and say how inhumane we are. But they won’t to talk about the 340,000 children that they've failed to take care of," Homan said, presumably referring to the Biden administration.   The leftist corporate media will “tell one side of the story,” Homan said. “they'll try to vilify us, but they're not going to stop us from doing [our] job.”    After what he has witnessed while serving both as a border Patrol Agent and in ICE, Homan says he does not care what the media says about him.    Homan joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” for a special bonus edition to discuss the resources the Trump administration will need to carry out deportations of illegal aliens, and what information he expects to be uncovered regarding the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border.    Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus edition of the Diggly Signal podcast. I'm Virginia Allen. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to secure America's border and to deport illegal aliens, especially criminal illegal aliens living in the United States. To do that, he has tapped Tom Homan as borders are. Homan has dedicated decades of his life 34 years to securing America's border, working in customs in border protection, and immigration and customs enforcement. During the first Trump administration, Homan was the acting director of immigration and customs enforcement. And he joins me on the show today to talk about what priorities will be put in place on day one as he and Trump seek to fulfill the pledge that Trump has made to secure America's border. Stay tuned for my conversation with Tom Homan after this.

Well, it is my distinct privilege and honor to be joined by Tom Homan. former acting director of ICE and the incoming borders are under the Trump administration. Mr. Holman, thanks for taking the time to be here today. Thanks for the invite. Well, I was hearing earlier, we were chatting a little bit in a meeting and hearing you tell a little bit about the story of when Trump called you after the election and said, hey, you need to get back in here and help me secure this border. What did the president say to you when he called you? You'd worked with him before, obviously. You served as that acting director of ICE.

What was that conversation? Well, you know, we've talked all through the campaign, so he knew that if he called on me, I'd take the job. So he knew what the answer was before he even called me. But he called me Friday night, and we talked about me. I've been complaining about the border for four years, so he's given me an opportunity to come back and fix it. So how do you say no to that? So, like, I think President Trump is a game-changing. We had the most successful, most secure border in my lifetime under President Trump.

And it went from the most secure border to historically. immigration. So when he called me, I was ready to go. He didn't have to ask, but he did. So I immediately said yes. And then we started describing the position and what my responsibilities were. And I said, came in. Let's do it. Came on. And a couple days later, he announced it and we're ready to go. Ready to go. Well, one of the first things that you and the president have agreed on that will be a top priority is deportation, and specifically deporting criminal illegal aliens. though we know that that costs a lot of money, right? ICE is going to need money in order to carry those out.

And right now we've seen that the Biden administration seems to have really kind of made it almost like their mission to spend as much money as possible before leaving office. What do you expect to find when you get in there on day one? What kind of resources do you think you're going to have available in order to carry out these deportations? Well, not enough resources to do what I want to do, but we're going to take whatever resources we have. I'm going to start on day one, and we're going to start the deportation operation. We're going to secure the border, and we're going to find, look to find over 300,000 children that were smuggling the country and released by the sponsors. So day one, it starts.

We're going to do as much as it can with what we got. And I think Congress will fund us going forward at appropriate level to make sure we answer the mandate given by the American people. Secure Board of Immigration enforcement was the number one issue affecting voters. So they want it fixed. So we're going to get it fixed. So we're going to do everything we can with what we have. And you're right. They're sabotaging this coming in.

But it's not going to stop us. We're going to get this done. Have you been having conversations with members of Congress about the funding that ICE is going to need? Because Congress is pretty used to shifting funds towards CBP, but not as used to raising those funds that ICE needs. Are our members pretty open? Yeah, I've had numerous conversations with people in the House and the Senate. They understand the need for funding. A lot of people complain this is going to be an expensive operation, and it is.

But, you know, we're spending much more than that now in perpetuity between, you know, free airline tickets, free hotel rooms, free medical care, what is done to our school system, what it's done to our, you know, medical and trauma centers and hospitals. And that's in perpetuity. So, yeah, it's going to be expensive operation, but in the long run, it would be a tax savings for American people. And that's the conversation I've been having with members. on the hill, yeah, it's expensive. We need money. But I guess we're in the long run,

just the cost savings. Yeah, big bill up front, much deeper in the long run. Right. How quickly do you anticipate deportation starting? Day one. Day one. February 21st. Ice agents will be out doing their job. We want to take the handcuffs off ice and put them on the bad guys. And we've been real clear that right out of the gate, we're going to concentrate on public safety threats and security threats, but no one's off the table. If you're in the United States, if you're in the United States illegally, you've got a problem. And so, but we're we realize that we got to do the worst first, and that's what we're going to do. How do you handle states like California that have put together a slush fund of $25 million

in order to provide legal services to illegal aliens to help them avoid deportation? Well, they're not going to stop us from doing their job. It's just going to be harder. It's going to be less efficient. It's going to be more costly to do a job in the sanctuary city. I still find it amazing because, like I just said, we're going to concentrate on public safety threats and national security threats. I don't know how any elected representative, whether you're a mayor or a city, a governor,

we want to push back on removing public safety threats from your communities and making a community safer. I thought that was the number one responsibility to protection of the communities. So look, they can put up many roadblocks they want. We're going to get this job done. It'll be harder to do it, but we're going to do it. So we're not afraid of hard work. It's more important we protect the national security of this nation and take public safety threats off the street. how many more young women have to be raped and murdered and burned alive before this country wakes up.

The left side of the country wakes up and realizes that this isn't a bad thing. This is about enforced the law and protecting our public safety. I think a lot of people don't realize that this conversation really also is about protecting the lives of those migrants and ensuring that those who have been exploited by the cartels are no longer. That's what people need to understand. Illigal migration is not a victim of its crime. Studies have been done were one-third of the women that make that journey through cartels who are sexually assaulted.

One-third admitted it. So how many is the actual number, right? We know aliens dying the border every day. A historic number of aliens have died under Biden administration. Historic number of Americans have died of Fentanom because of the open border. So a secure border saves lives. No one can argue that. When President Trump had 90% less people coming, how many women weren't being sexually assaulted,

how many aliens didn't die making that journey, how many Americans didn't die from drug or overdoses because the border is locked down. So secure borders saved lives, and that's what we're going to push. Regarding unaccompanied children and sex trafficking and the exploitation of those kids, what do you expect to find when you get into that position as borders are? Is there a lot more information that you think is going to be discovered about what exactly has happened to these young people. We need to have access to everything.

ORR has done in the Office of Refugee Resettlement. We're going to need the records of what sponsors these children have released to. Many whistleblowers from ORLs already said that sponsors weren't all fingerprinted. The identifications weren't always verified. So it's going to be a hard job. All the three things, you know, that I'm leading, the border, the immigration, deportation, and the children, children are going to be most difficult because you and I, and most adults, all adults, have a footprint,

digital footprint. We own a home, own a car, we pay bills, we pay utilities, we have credit. So there's, we all can be found. Children don't have that kind of footprint, which means we gotta use a footprint, digital footprint the sponsors, but the records are poor or not existing.

It's gonna make them harder. But what we're gonna find is, and many of these children, when we find them, are gonna be in forced labor. Some will be enforced sex trafficking, sex slavery. Not all of them, some are, be safe, but we got to find these children to make sure they are safe and rescue, because many of them are living in a life of hell and we've got to rescue these children.

We'll deal with the immigration consequences after the fact, but right now we've got to save these children, find them and save them. We're, like you said, we're literally talking about hundreds of thousands of kids here that we don't know where they are. So if they don't have that footprint, what does step one look like in actually finding these kids? Well, there's the ways. I'm not going to discuss it on air because it's law enforcement and sense. We have our ways and our methods to do that. But one of the things we're going to do is count on American people. Parents across the country have an innate ability to recognize when something's not right with a child.

Yeah. So we're going to ask people to see something, say something, give us some leads. You may know where some of these children are at. You may have, you know, friends that know where some of these children are replaced. And looking for the public's help. You know, we're deputize every American citizen. citizen to, you know, help us rescue these children. So there'll be more coming in that. But we're going to reach out to the communities and we'll reach out to the private sector, who's done

a lot of this work already, and make a partnership with the private sector. Yeah. We know that there's a lot that we don't know about what happened under the Biden administration when it comes to conversations that were had about the border behind closed doors, money that was funneled into NGOs that really allowed for this crisis to take place. Our those things going to come out? Is information going to come out? Look, all that's going to be investigated, right? We know what role did the UN play of immigration? What role do they play? What role did the NGOs play? Were they involved in coordinating? Were they complicit in international deal of immigration? How did the NGOs get funded? Who funded them? How was that money spent? So all of this be looked at.

with a new administration to make sure that American people have the truth and see what happened to their tax dollars. And why this happened? Why did they choose to unsecure the border on purpose? What was the reasoning behind that? So all that's going to be looked at. I know that there's going to be a number of executive orders that are signed on day one, including those having to deal with the border and immigration.

What executive orders would you like to see the president sign on day one? Well, look, you know, I think people are going to be pleased with the executive orders he is going to sign. I'm familiar with many of them, but I'm not going to get ahead of the president on that, but I think we go back to what was successful, right? On the Trump administration, we have the most secure border in my lifetime. So we go back to, like, remain in Mexico, third safety, country agreements, and catch and release, continue building that wall. things that we proved work. We had the most secure border in my lifetime because of President Trump

and what he's done with out-of-the-box thinking. They were game changers. Remainting in Mexico was a game changer. After about 60 days, people stopped giving the criminal cartels everything they've ever had in their life or everything they've owned to be smuggled into the United States. And after they saw they weren't being released into the United States during the Remain of Mexico, they stopped coming.

And when they stopped coming, They stopped spending their life savings given to the criminal cartels. They stopped dying, enter the country. They stopped being sexually assaulted into this country. Cartels them a bag of goods. We'll get to the United States and claim asylum, but they never tell them that 90% of those asylum claims end up with an order removal.

So I suspect what you're going to see is President Trump dusting off a lot of what we did in the first administration because they were proven effective and put them back in place. Yeah. And even those that under the Biden administration, have received those remove orders, correct me if I'm wrong, but we know a lot of those folks, they're still here. We have a $1.4 million right now,

illegal analysts who had due process at great taxpayer expense and were ordered removed. And then they didn't leave. They became a fugitive. And I say this, you know, the people that are saying, this is a terrible, terrible operation, it's inhumane, whatever, I hear it all. You can't demand the right to claim asylum and see a judge.

You can't demand the right to due process. And at the end of that due process, a judge makes the decision. You've got to uphold those decisions. If we don't, then what's how we're doing? If the due process doesn't mean anything, if the final decision of the courts isn't handed down and executed, then what are we doing? You might as just shut down immigration courts because the judge's orders don't mean anything.

Take the border draw off the border because there's no consequences. So no. You can't demand or create historic illegal immigration crisis and not follow through the decisions. You want to see a judge? We'll make that happen. You want to claim asylum? We'll make that happen. But at the end of that game, when the judge orders them removed, we have to remove them.

That's what the law requires. Yeah, and that's ISIS job. You have promised it's going to happen under this administration. What do you expect to see a year from now? Where are we going to be at? What's the situation going to look like? I think we won't take a lot of hate. We're going to be sued every day numerous times.

I think you can see the left try to control the media. They're going to show the first crying female, first crying child and say how inhumane we are. but they won't talk about 340,000 children that they failed to take care of. They're not going to talk about the young women who have been murdered in this country at the hands of criminal cartels. They're not going to talk about the hundreds of angel moms and dads who buried their children. You want to talk about family separation. They buried their children because their children were killed by a member of a member of a criminal

cartel or someone that's not supposed to be here. They'll tell one side of the story. They'll try to vilifies, but they're not going to stop us. doing our job. I don't care what the media says about me. If they saw what I saw in 34 years, all the tragedies I've dealt with in 34 years, they were certainly understand me. They may not still like me, but there's a reason why we do what we do. I'm tired of women being raped, making that journey. I'm tired of dead children. I'm tired of women and children being sex traffic. On this administration, sex trafficking is up 600% of women and children. We have a record number

people in the terrorist wastes being arrested. Historic record, a 3,500% increase. Record number Americans die in Fattenah. We got a record number of a cartel members of enter this country. You know, the criminal cartels of Mexico making more money they've ever made and smuggling aliens, trafficking in women and children, and moving dope. So, uh, hate all you want. Push the misinformation all you want. We're not going to slow down. We're not going to go away. We won't get this done. Over 30 years of service for you, of working, working to secure the border, of working to protect the border. Many people wouldn't fault you for saying, I've seen it all, I've been in the dirt and the muck of it.

I want to kick my feet up. I want to take a break from it all. Why? Why are you coming back? Because we've got a problem. The border is the biggest national security vulnerability of this nation I've seen because we got over two main gotaways. Who are they? We know over 2 million people into this country legally, weren't arrested, weren't vetted. We don't know who they are, where they came from. We also know that there's a record

number of people on terrorist watch lists that have been arrested under this administration. They arrested more people in terrorist watch lists last month than we did under four years of President Trump. Four years on President Trump, we had 14. They have more than a month. There's a 3,500 percent increase on people on terrorist watch list. Chris Rui, who I'm not pals with and don't respect a lot of what he's said and done. Even he agrees the Southwest border has become a national security vulnerability. Intellisian community has made it clear

that there are threats inside the United States that came across the border. There are terrorist cells within this country. So you can't have strong national security if he don't have border security. We didn't know what's coming in, who's

coming in, where it's coming in. So I love this country. Like you said, I started for 34 years. The border is broken. We fixed it once before. We'll come back and fix it again. This time I'm going to finish the job. Then I can find a retire, knowing that I serve my country,

and we got this country a safer place. And by doing so, secure border saves lives. Again, when you have a secure border, and 90% less people are coming, less people are being raped, less people are dying, so that's why I'm coming back. It's the second time I come out of retirement for President Trump. I plan on this being my last, so we're going to get this job done that I can retire and know that I served my country honorably.

And again, a lot of people out there despise me and the work I do, but I don't care. I'm going to come back and it's the right thing to do. Saving lives is the right thing to do. Have you spoken with President Trump specifically about the wall and his plans for adding to the wall? We won't add to the wall. The wall is worse. Every place to build a border barrier, illegal migrations went down, illegal drug, flow went down. But what people don't talk about, the wall also saves lives. And what I mean by

that? The most vulnerable of those that come across the border are the women and children. Women and children can't get over that wall pretty much, which means they're going to go to a place where there's not a wall. And what's waiting on them. The men and one of the board took to deal those humanitarian crises, take care of their health crisis, which many are in bad shape and they get here. So it saves lives. So we're going to finish the wall. A lot of American families over the past several years have lost loved ones. to fentanyl at the hands of illegal aliens, whether in vehicle crashes or at the physical hands in the case of individuals like Lake and Riley, Rachel Morin. What is your message to those

families that have experienced firsthand the tragedy of this open border crisis? Well, look, your heart breaks for them because their children should still be alive. If President Trump was president the last four years, the man that killed Lake and Riley would have been detained and arrested. in New York, we arrested New York City for endangerment to the child. If it wasn't this administration and it wasn't the priorities of ICE that you can't arrest an illegal analyst, you're convicted of a serious crime, he would have been taken in custody. He would never get to Georgia to commit that crime. So help is coming.

You got President Trump's coming who's, again, unprecedented in his success to secure the border. So help's coming. Too late for them. But I can rest assured that once we secure that border, less bad guys get in unless this stuff will happen. So more families be spared of the terrible, terrible tragedy they're dealing with, and they'll deal with the rest of their lives. I've met hundreds of angel moms and dads, and I remember every single story. And I'll never forget those stories. And we're doing this for them in a major way because, you know, the left keeps talking about the Trump family separation,

but no one talks about the thousands of separations that have occurred. You want to talk about separation? They bury their children. That's a permanent separation. So help's coming. And hopefully we can say more families from dealing with tragedies like they dealt with. Yeah. Mr. Human, thank you for your time.

Thank you for your service to our country. Appreciate the work that you're preparing to do. Thank you. I appreciate you. We're going to leave it right there for today. Thanks for joining the Daily Signal for this special bonus edition. And be sure to be following the Daily Signal this week and in the weeks to come, especially on inauguration day for extensive coverage on the actions of the Trump administration,

what executive orders are being signed specifically on inauguration day. We're going to have teams on the ground at the inauguration. So make sure that you're following the Daily Signal across all platforms, of course across social media, and then on our website atdailySignal.com. Thanks for joining us today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on any of the shows from the Daily Signal Podcast, whether bonus editions like this one are weekend shows or Top News in 10 that comes out every weekday around 5 p.m. Have a great rest of your day and thanks again for joining us.

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