Tom Homan, former acting ICE director, at a press conference in Anzalduas Park in Mission, Texas, on March 30. 2021. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times
By Noé Chartier
The man President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to clamp down on illegal immigration has a personal connection to the U.S. northern border and he intends to tighten it to protect against what he calls significant national security threats.
Trump announced on Nov. 11 that former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director Tom Homan will oversee the work of federal entities involved in border security when the Trump administration enters the White House in early 2025.
Speaking with TV network WWNY on Nov. 11, Homan said border patrol agents at the northern border are “overwhelmed.”
A lot more illegal migrants are coming through the U.S. southern border, but there’s a smaller ratio of border officers at the northern border, Homan said, leading to fewer patrols on roads and waterways. He said this poses a “huge national security issue.”
Homan also said that during his 34-year career he’d seen “a lot” of “special interest aliens” from countries sponsoring terrorism trying to reach the U.S. from Canada. He said these types of migrants choose to cross from Canada because they can afford the higher costs, being backed financially, and they know there’s less border surveillance.
“So it’s an extreme national security vulnerability in the northern border and it’s one of the things I’ll tackle as soon as I’m in the White House,” said Homan, who hails from a town in upstate New York and owns a residence on the border.
“There has to be an understanding from Canada that they can’t be a gateway to terrorists coming to the United States.”
Homan suggested Trump’s previous “Remain in Mexico” policy could be applied to Canada. The policy, scrapped by the Biden administration in 2022, required that asylum seekers to the U.S. wait in Mexico for their immigration hearings.
Homan said negotiations need to take place between the U.S. and Canada, “but until then, we’ll do what President Trump did before, end catch-and-release, put the Remain in Mexico program” and “up in Canada do the same thing.”
‘Invasion’
Trump won the popular vote and swept battleground states in the Nov. 5 presidential election with a platform leaning heavily on addressing illegal immigration. The 45th, and soon-to-be 47th president, has mostly focused on the southern border, calling it an “invasion.”
Trump has promised to seal the border “on day one” and to begin the “largest deportation operation in American history.”
The latest available statistics from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) say there were nearly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2022. Meanwhile Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reports having encountered over 2.1 million migrants at the southwest land border so far this year.
Homan told WWNY his role in the White House will be to establish the strategy and oversee the deportation operation, in coordination with entities like DHS, ICE, and CBP.
Acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner told NBC News this past summer that deportation involves a lot of resources. “It’s not only putting them on planes and flying them, which is expensive, we got to have airplanes,“ he said. ”We also have to deal with host nations. We have to get travel documents, we have to do all the logistics involved with that.”
Homan said while some say the deportation operation will be very costly, he suggested it would be a cost-saving measure. “Mass deportation is going to cost money up front, but in the end, we’re going to save the taxpayers a lot of money,” he said.
“We’re spending billions of dollars a year right now transporting these people, paying NGOs billions of dollars to put them in a hotel room at 500 bucks a night, giving free medical care, free meals.”
Northern Border
While the U.S. southern border has been Trump’s focus, the northern border has also seen an increasing number of migrant encounters in recent years, from 109,535 in 2022 to 198,929 in 2024.
DHS reacted this summer by changing the rules for asylum seekers at the U.S. northern border, shortening the time to consult a lawyer from 24 to four hours, and telling border agents to only consider documents possessed by the migrants at the time of arrival.
With Trump’s promised immigration crackdown, authorities in Canada are also bracing for an increased inward migratory flow.
The RCMP said last week it has prepared a contingency plan to deal with different scenarios, including a small increase in illegal migration to a “complete crisis” similar to when Trump won in 2016.
“We’re not wishing for this, but if it does happen, we’ll be ready,” Sgt. Charles Poirier told The Epoch Times, noting the police force is looking at logistics around transportation and potential buildings to use. The installations at Roxham Road, Que., which dealt with a steady stream of migrants coming from the U.S., were dismantled in 2023 after Ottawa and Washington closed a loophole in their agreement around asylum seekers.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said this week Canada will protect its national interests no matter what policies are adopted by Trump. He told the Globe and Mail that those coming to Canada should use a regular pathway and said the reality is that “not everyone is welcome here.”
The immigration system has come under criticism lately with individuals allegedly involved in terrorist plots having been granted various immigations statuses in Canada. The father and son in a Toronto terrorism plot, Ahmed and Mostafa Eldidi, were both granted refugee status, with Ahmed receiving citizenship a few weeks before being arrested in July.
In a separate case, Pakistani national Muhammad Shahzeb Khan was in Canada on a student visa when he was arrested before allegedly attempting to cross into the U.S. to conduct a terrorist attack against Jews.