If the second Trump administration does what the president-elect says about immigration — finish the wall, stop unauthorized border crossings, keep asylum applicants in Mexico while their case is pending, and deport millions of foreign-born people here without legal residency — it will be a Catholic overseeing the effort. 

Tom Homan, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for border czar. 

Homan, 62, who served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the first Trump administration, grew up in West Carthage, a village in far upstate New York about 30 miles southeast of the border with Canada. He is one of seven children. His father was a police officer and later a local magistrate; his mother was a homemaker. 

“Our upbringing was very conservative and very Catholic. We went to Mass every Sunday and sat in the same pew every time. God help anyone who arrived before us and sat in our seats!” Homan writes in his 2020 book Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving Our Most Important Humanitarian and Security Crisis. 

It’s the last time in the book he mentions his religion, something he doesn’t ordinarily speak about in public interviews — though he did participate in a podcast hosted by a priest in May 2020 titled “Life as a Catholic Border Patrol Agent,” during which the interviewer called him “a devout Mass-goer.” 

While he doesn’t typically invoke religion, everywhere he goes Homan portrays securing the border and removing people who are here illegally in moral terms, describing these actions as a humanitarian imperative. 

He argues that a porous border enables cartels in Mexico to brutalize migrants, subjecting them to sexual assault, inhumane traveling conditions, torture (when they or their relatives don’t pay up) and sometimes death, and that it penalizes U.S. citizens and legal immigrants by lowering the wages of laborers, particularly poor people, while promoting disrespect for the law and chaos in communities. 

Homan says he wants to stop illegal crossers and punish employers who hire them, as well as kick out foreigners who slipped through or who overstayed their visas, reversing several of the policies that the Biden administration pursued during the current president’s first three-plus years in office. 

The new border czar’s agenda may conflict with that of many U.S. bishops, who generally take a pro-immigrant stand while acknowledging a country’s right to maintain its borders. 

On Nov. 14, nine days after Donald Trump won the presidential election, three U.S. bishops in leadership positions released a written statement “in firm solidarity with our immigrant brothers and sisters,” calling for “generous pathways to full citizenship,” “permanent relief for childhood arrivals” and “an effective asylum system for those fleeing persecution.” The statement was signed by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Bishop Mark Seitz, chairman of the USCCB’s eight-member Committee on Migration, and Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto, chairman of the board of the Catholic Immigration Legal Network. 

Bishop Seitz, who also leads the border diocese of El Paso, said during a press conference Nov. 12 that he and other bishops “will raise our voice loudly” if they determine that the Trump administration’s actions are violating human rights. 

During the recent presidential campaign, Trump called for mass deportations. On Monday, he confirmed in a social media post on Truth Social that he plans to use the U.S. military to carry that out. 

In recent interviews, Homan has emphasized he plans to focus first on what he calls “national security threats,” including those identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as terrorists, and “public safety threats,” which include immigrants here illegally who have committed crimes either in their own country or in the United States. 

 

What His Supporters Say 

Homan did not respond to a request for an interview for this story. But the Register contacted two Catholic experts on immigration who know Homan and have followed his career. Both are allies, affiliates of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that promotes tougher immigration policies. Both were asked to characterize Homan’s views on immigration in Catholic terms — particularly in light of the consistently pro-immigration message that comes from most U.S. bishops who speak publicly on the subject. 

“I think this is a really good story because there are many Catholic leaders who have been very vocal on the immigration issue, even though I don’t think there is any reasonable objection in the Catholic faith and doctrine to countries securing their borders and enforcing their laws in a humane way,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. 

“The reason Tom is so passionate about this,” she continued, referring to Homan, “is that he has seen the harm when the border is not secure and our country has not enforced our immigration laws.” 

In the book and public appearances, Homan frequently refers to an incident in May 2003 in Victoria, Texas, when he investigated an oven-like tractor-trailer in which 19 people died because, according to Homan, the drop-off location unexpectedly changed and the driver turned off the air conditioning so he wouldn’t draw suspicion at immigration checkpoints. 

One of the victims was a 5-year-old boy whose body was found under the dead body of his father. At the time Homan’s son was 5. 

“It appeared that the father was embracing and comforting his son at the time of his death. Several survivors later testified that the innocent little boy was the first to perish, crying ‘Daddy, Daddy, I’m dying,’” Homan writes in the book. “I knelt down and put my hand on his small head, and I prayed for him.” 

Art Arthur, a former immigration judge and resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration’s relatively lax policies on immigration have enabled and enriched Mexican cartels. 

“Tom has said — I’ve made the same argument — that simply taking in everybody who enters illegally creates a situation in which smugglers, traffickers, are able to thrive. Those are the worst of the worst people,” Arthur said. “So a well-ordered, well-run immigration system is actually the best system for protecting human dignity. That’s what Tom in every one of his interviews talks about.” 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says people have what it calls “the right to emigrate” (2211) and that prosperous nations “are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” (2241). 

On Aug. 28 Pope Francis said during a general audience in Rome that working to “repel migrants” is “a grave sin.” 

But the Catechism also says that political authorities “may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions” and that immigrants have a duty to obey the laws of the country they are in (2241). The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says a sovereign country has a “duty” to “secure one’s border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good.” 

Immigration skeptics say the process is more complicated than how some Church leaders describe it. 

“I understand what the Holy Father says. I understand what the U.S. bishops say. This isn’t a black-and-white situation. There’s a reason that Manichaeism is a heresy,” Arthur told the Register. “To apply the immigration laws appropriately, respectfully — I believe Mr. Homan would agree with this — truly does live up to those Catholic principles.” 

Vaughan told the Register that Homan is driven to combat what she called “abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people who are tempted to violate our laws believing that they will be allowed to stay in the United States.” 

“Tom believes very strongly that this is a terrible moral position to allow — that abandoning immigration enforcement is wrong from a moral point of view and from a point of view of faith, that this cannot be tolerated by people of faith,” Vaughan said. 

Family Separation? 

Immigration supporters have criticized some of Homan’s past official actions as immoral. 

An August 2022 story in The Atlantic Monthly identifies Homan as the “father” of the first Trump administration’s Zero Tolerance policy at the border that led to separating children from their parents in detention. 

“Most parents don’t want to be separated. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t think that would have an effect,” the story quotes Homan as saying. 

Kevin Appleby, senior fellow at the Center for Migration Studies, a public policy think tank that advocates for the rights of migrants,  told the Register there’s nothing Catholic about family separation, and that Homan ought to examine his past actions. 

“He should go back and read his Catechism. Separating families and abandoning children is against Catholic teaching. If he is doing this in the name of being Catholic, he is bearing false witness,” Appleby said by email. 

Arthur told the Register that the Zero Tolerance policy implemented in 2017 was meant to deal with a crisis stemming from a surge at the border by prosecuting adults for illegal entry, and that some adult migrants were showing up with children because they thought the presence of the children might get both adults and children into the United States. 

“I certainly understand people who decry separating a parent from a child, but the purpose of Zero Tolerance wasn’t to separate families — it was to discourage people from bringing their children here,” Arthur said. “The idea wasn’t to harm children. It was to protect children from all of the horrors and all of the hells that are associated with their illegal smuggling journey.” 

Big Job 

All sides agree that the U.S. immigration system is in rough shape. 

As of Sept. 30, more than 3.5 million pending cases were awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review. 

As of October 2023, more than 1.2 million foreigners were in the United States illegally despite having been issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge after their asylum claims were denied. These individuals were not in federal custody, according to the 2023 annual report of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Homan’s plans are ambitious for a job that doesn’t yet exist. The title “border czar” doesn’t come with an agency, budget or workforce behind it, which is why Homan doesn’t need confirmation from the U.S. Senate to take the post. 

But does that mean the job is toothless? 

Vaughan said she doesn’t think so. 

“He’s going to be the public face of immigration policy under Trump,” Vaughan said. “Knowing Tom Homan, he would not accept a job where he was sitting on an island with no influence or authority. He just wouldn’t take it. And the fact that he was one of the president’s first appointees will be noted by people at the other agencies that deal with immigration, and they will note that they have to be responsive to the message that is coming from the White House regarding immigration, if they want to keep their jobs.” 

“Tom wants to get something done. He’s not going to be content with going on Fox News to talk about the border. He’s going to be banging some heads together if he has to.”