Border Czar Homan: This One Part of My Job Remains Very Tough

Border czar Tom Homan says he wakes up “every day like a kid in a candy shop” because U.S. border and immigrations law are being enforced under the leadership of President Donald Trump.  

“We’re finally enforcing laws in this country, and we’re going to do it without apology,” Homan said in a speech Wednesday at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C.

Still, he added, one of the key components of his job remains very difficult.  

Out of all the tasks Trump has tasked Homan with, “the toughest job is to find children,” the border czar said.  

The Biden administration lost contact with about 300,000 migrant children who crossed the border without a parent or guardian. Those children were then released into the care of sponsors across the U.S. It was revealed later that some sponsors were not thoroughly vetted.  

About “1,400 children were released to unvetted sponsors, where no home study was ever done,” Homan said. Investigations into the whereabouts of those children uncovered that some sponsors listed an inaccurate address—such as that of a parking lot, grocery store, or church—as their home address.  

The challenge now is finding those children, because minors can’t be tracked in the way law enforcement tracks adults.  

“You all own cars, you own a home, you got credit cards, you pay utility bills, we know how to find you,” Homan explained. “Children don’t have that digital footprint, which means we got to count on the digital footprint of the so-called sponsors.”  

Still, Homan says, Homeland Security Investigations agents are working every day to find the missing migrant children and “make sure they’re safe.”  

Many of the children the Trump administration has located to date are safe and living with family, according to Homan, but others “are in sex trafficking, some of the children we found in forced labor, and we rescued these children.”  

Tragically, some of the missing children have passed away, according to the border czar.  

“This is sickening, what the last administration did. I don’t want to hear another word about the cruelty of the Trump administration. I’ll say it again: He’s saving thousands of lives, and we’re rescuing children every day because of the incompetence of the Biden administration,” Homan said.  

“I get fired up,” he added, as the crowd chuckled.  

Homan’s border security career began in the 1980s, when he joined the Border Patrol before going on to serve in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In 2017, Trump appointed Homan acting director of ICE.

During the Biden administration, Homan said, “for four years, I woke up knowing how many women got raped last night, how many children died making that journey, how many women and children were sex-trafficked across the border, how many known or suspected terrorists came across the border every day—I woke up knowing all this was happening because the border was open.”  

Since the start of the Trump administration, Customs and Border Protection’s encounters with illegal aliens are down 96% at the southern border, according to Homan.  

The number of known “gotaways”—illegal aliens who manage to evade Border Patrol apprehension—has also fallen sharply, down from an average of 1,800 a day during the Biden administration. On Sept. 2, there were only 16 known gotaways across the nearly 2,000-mile-long U.S. border with Mexico, according to the border czar.  

Homan pledged that his work is not done, noting that more border wall needs to be built and more border buoys need to be put in the Rio Grande to prevent illegal crossings. There are still about 600,000 illegal aliens with a criminal history on the streets of the U.S., and 1.4 million illegal aliens who have been issued a final order of removal but remain in the U.S. 

“But let me make it clear: We are prioritizing public safety threats and national security threats … but if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table,” Homan said. “When we find you, you’re leaving.” 

Despite the opposition the Trump administration has faced to its immigration enforcement efforts, a 1,000% increase of assaults on ICE agents, and even protests outside the border czar’s home, Homan says he is “not going anywhere.”  

“Watch what happens in the next year, folks,” Homan told the crowd, pledging further action to secure the border and enforce immigration law.  

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